May is an important time of year for all Tar Heels. For many, it means graduation and a close to their time at Carolina.
For others, it still means graduation, but their Carolina adventure continues. This is especially true for staff and faculty who work while finishing a degree.
Our colleague Erika Redding is in that second group. After successfully defending her dissertation in May, she’s now Dr. Erika Redding. We can’t celebrate her enough and need your help to shower her in kudos!
“May was a whirlwind,” she added, describing a packed schedule of weddings, travel, dissertation defense and graduation. While it was a lot, she found it “fun” and “really exciting.”
Redding technically finishes in August and decided not to do the Ph.D. hooding ceremony. Instead of waiting until the next one in Spring 2025, she was part of the Gillings School of Global Public Health graduation.
Redding graduated from the Department of Health Behavior with her Ph.D.
Violence and injury prevention: the dissertation work
Redding’s dissertation work focused on violence and injury prevention in North Carolina. She was particularly interested in examining the experiences of Black plaintiffs when seeking DVPOs and looked at the relationship between county-level structural racism and its impact on domestic violence protective order (DVPO) outcomes in the state.
Redding’s work asked how can we make sure that the DVPO process supports everyone who files a request. She is working on getting her analysis and results ready for publication.
The road to graduation
Redding started her program at Gillings in 2017. She was in a master’s to Ph.D. program that let her work through both stages of graduate work seamlessly.
Overall, she was in the program for six and half years. Three and half of those years were dissertation work.
During that time, she started working at CHER. She joined our team in January 2022.
Redding said she “felt like [school and work] were really connected…with a lot of overlap.” Overall, she has a “strong interest in health disparities” and was able to focus on them in work and school. The best part was being able to “think about the same things in different contexts,” she said.
While she said working and doing graduate work at the same time is “a bit of a doozy,” she also said, “the folks at CHER have been so supportive.” Redding was appreciative of her supervisors, Gaurav “G” Dave and Jeffrey Mathew, for their flexibility and understanding.
Overall, Redding expressed excitement about graduating. She said, “It’s really exciting and feels like such an accomplishment. It has felt like a long time; it’s nice to be done, to feel that I can focus on my work and the next thing.”
What’s next?
Redding is staying at CHER. She’s talked with her supervisors about aligning the work she does with her new degree and new skills.
“I really like this space in academia that feels a little less ‘academic’,” Redding said.
She explained that she likes the implementation science work because it “feels a bit more grounded and actionable.”
In great news for us, Redding said she feels “like CHER is a great place to do that.” We’re so grateful to hear that and proud to share Dr. Redding’s significant academic achievement.