Caroline A. Thompson

Caroline A. Thompson, PhD, MPH is an Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of North Carolina’s Gillings School of Global Public Health. Her research focuses on disparities in cancer screening, diagnosis, and outcomes, with methodological expertise in healthcare data integration and bias analysis. She returned to UNC after 20 years in California, where she held faculty roles at San Diego State University and UC San Diego.

Dr. Thompson holds a PhD and MPH in Epidemiology from UCLA (2013 and 2010), and a BA in Biology from UNC-Chapel Hill (1999). Her work emphasizes improving the accuracy of longitudinal healthcare data (e.g., medical claims, EHRs) and reducing biases in observational studies through quantitative methods like the BRACE correction for treatment selection bias.

Her research interests include:

• Cancer diagnostic delays and emergency department involvement
• Geographic and socioeconomic disparities in healthcare access
• Ethnic/racial disparities in cancer outcomes (e.g., Asian Americans, Hispanic/Latino populations)
• Methodological innovations in data integration and bias mitigation

Recent work highlights innovative approaches like linking electronic health records with cancer registries, developing community-level healthcare access metrics, and examining SOGI data collection in large cohorts. She has contributed to policy-relevant studies on lung cancer treatment disparities and emergency diagnosis pathways.

Her research has been supported by collaborations with organizations like the California Teachers Study and NRG Oncology. Notable contributions include the BRACE method for bias reduction in observational data and geospatial analyses of cancer care disparities.