Meet the Expert: Delesha Carpenter
Dr. Carpenter designs interventions to help pharmacists address some of health care’s most sensitive topics
Story by Ryan McDaniel | Published January 9, 2024
In 2010, Delesha Carpenter, PhD, MSPH was working as a postdoctoral research fellow at the UNC Thurston Arthritis Research Center when she saw a job listing for a postdoc position in Dr. Betsy Sleath’s lab in the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy’s Division of Pharmaceutical Outcomes and Policy (DPOP). Delesha chose not to apply, since she had recently received a T32 training grant from the NIH to support her current role. “The next day, my former mentor, Dr. Jo Anne Earp, emailed me to ask if was going to apply for Dr. Sleath’s position,” Delesha recalls. “I told her about the T32 and said that I wasn’t going to apply. She replied, ‘Yes, you are going to apply.’ You never ignore the advice of a great mentor, so I applied, met Betsy, and fell in love with the important work she and DPOP were doing. The rest is history – I’ve been with the School ever since.”
Delesha, now an Associate Professor and Executive Vice Chair of DPOP, focuses her research on developing interventions to help pharmacists and providers discuss sensitive topics, such as suicide and opioid use disorder, in a patient-centered manner. Her near-term goal is to help providers to be more prepared for these difficult conversations, helping patients discuss their issues in a safe space, and connect patients with resources as needed. Long-term, of course, this work aims to save lives through early intervention with those patients most in need.
“Dr Carpenter delivers research and talks on topics that have been considered sensitive in an empathic, understanding and respectful way,” says Dr. Hayley Gorton, Senior Lecturer in Pharmacy at University of Huddersfield, and one of Delesha’s collaborators. “It is important that topics such as suicide and opioid use disorders are spoken about in research and clinical communities, and beyond, to try to overcome some of the taboos which still, unfortunately, exist in some places.”
But Delesha didn’t start out in this research area. In fact, she was unaware that health-care research was an option to her until she was an undergraduate in college. After losing family members to preventable diseases, Delesha knew she wanted to pursue health care and was working on her degree in cardiopulmonary sciences when she took a research methods class. After that, she says, “I was hooked and knew that I wanted to pursue a career in public health with a research focus.”
Delesha’s research focus, at first, was on medication adherence, asthma, and digital health. About seven years ago, when two of Delesha’s friends died just two weeks apart from opioid overdoses, she shifted her work. “As someone who is trained in public health, their deaths were a wake-up call that I could no longer ignore the opioid overdose and mental health issues facing our society,” she reflects. “Shifting my research focus to suicide and preventing overdoses has been a healing experience for me and helped me cope with the grief.”
Outcomes from her research are beginning to make their impact; her work to develop two trainings (Buprenorphine Understanding in the Pharmacy Environment [BUPE] and Pharm-SAVES for suicide prevention) have been well-received by the pharmacy community. She will be sharing Pharm-SAVES results during a webinar with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention next month. Another collaborator of Delesha’s, Dr. Bayla Ostrach, PhD, MA, CIP, observes, “We have some recent findings from a pilot of the training we developed with community partners suggesting that pharmacists that participated in the first iteration of the training increased their willingness to dispense buprenorphine, so that’s a step in the right direction.”
Outside of her work, Delesha has a love of the outdoors – a love fulfilled by living in Asheville, NC. She, her husband, Brad, daughter, Anne, and two dogs, Giro and Carmelita, enjoy hiking in the mountains around the city. They also love to travel – Delesha’s favorite destination so far has been the Galápagos Islands. She says, “We try to head out on at least one major adventure per year.”
Practicing wellness outside of her work allows Delesha to stay focused and enthusiastic about what she does. With her latest grant, she works to identify gaps in naloxone access in North Carolina and will then work with community pharmacists and partners to close those gaps. Her work is aligned with the aims of local, state, and national government agencies to curb the opioid crisis and address mental health issues in safe, effective ways. As Dr. Gorton says, “I expect [Delesha’s] ongoing programs of work on suicide prevention training and naloxone delivery will influence policy recommendations both in North Carolina and the wider USA.”