Giselle Corbie-Smith is an Associate Professor of Social Medicine and Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Director of the Program on Health Disparities at the UNC Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research. She completed medical school at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and trained as an Internal Medicine Intern, Resident and Chief Resident at Yale University School of Medicine. She received a Masters of Science in Clinical Research from the Epidemiology Department at Emory University. Her interest in minority health issues, especially access to care and the influence of culture, race, ethnicity, and social class on health, dates from early in her academic career. Her clinical work has always focused on serving underserved populations in public hospitals or clinics. She currently maintains a clinical practice at a local community health center. Since joining the faculty at UNC in 2000, she has continued her research on barriers to minority participation in research. Her work focuses on trust and distrust as it impacts participation in research among minorities and the methodological and ethical issues involved in the inclusion of minorities in research. She is currently the Principal Investigator on grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to examine the patient-specific and investigator-specific factors that influence participation in research. She is also the Director of the Minority Research Core of the Carolina-Shaw Partnership for the Elimination of Health Disparities (Project Connect). As Principal Investigator of the LeARN Study, Dr. Corbie-Smith is examining research participants’ attitudes about participating in genetic research across the state of North Carolina. Her other studies include defining the barriers and facilitators to African American elders use of influenza vaccines, research on HIV risk among older African American women, and studying the impact of training in cultural competency on knowledge and skills among medical students and residents. Dr. Corbie-Smith was recently awarded the Jefferson-Pilot Fellowship in Academic Medicine.