Piedmont Health congratulates Dr. Giselle Corbie-Smith for her recent appointment to an endowed chair of Distinguished Professorship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This honor is given to a small number of faculty who are recognized by colleagues as leaders in their field. She was appointed to the chair on July 1, 2013.

Dr. Corbie-Smith, who graduated from Cornell University and Albert Einstein College of Medicine, both in New York, also received a Master of Science degree from Emory University in Atlanta. She has been on a mission recently to eliminate health disparities in minorities and underserved communities. A Professor of Social Medicine and Medicine at the UNC School of Medicine, Dr. Corbie-Smith also has worked with Piedmont Health’s Carrboro Community Health Center for 10 years. She serves the health center on Friday afternoons.

“What I enjoy most about working at Piedmont Health is the commitment of everyone to the highest quality care for our patients regardless of insurance status and ability to pay,” she said. “In the current health-care environment, Piedmont Health is unique in that commitment.”

Her focus at UNC-Chapel Hill has been on engaging communities of color appropriately in research. In a recent initiative, Project GRACE, Dr. Corbie-Smith trained youth as lay health advisors to go into their communities and counter misinformation about HIV infection.

Among the awards Dr. Corbie-Smith has received is the Leadership in Health Disparities Research award from the National Center for Minority Health and Health Disparities. She is married and a mother of three.