Add Health Research Project Director

About the role

The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), housed and administered at the Carolina Population Center (CPC), is the largest, most comprehensive nationally representative longitudinal study of adolescents ever undertaken. Over the 32-year-long and continuing project, Add Health has and continues to collect rich demographic, social, familial, behavioral, psychosocial, cognitive, and health survey data from participants and their parents; a vast array of contextual data from participants' schools, neighborhoods, and geographies of residence; and in-home physical and biological data from participants, including genetic markers, blood-based assays, anthropometric measures, and medications.

Responsibilities

• Provide leadership, financial and administrative management for the home exam field operations of the Add Health research project that has an approximate budget of $20 million.
• Oversee the biological portion of a nationwide original data collection effort performed by a major subcontractor and work very closely with three biological laboratories.
• Assist with keeping track of the 18,000-person cohort by developing retention plans and timelines.
• Coordinate development of questionnaire materials and standard operating procedures (SOPs) for data and specimen collection.
• Work with data staff on the transfer of sensitive information across subcontracting partners to ensure study participant information is accurately and securely transferred.
• Work closely with the Add Health research team including experts in sociology, epidemiology, and data collection management on the project’s biological day-to-day research activities involving data collection and field operations and coordinate field activities across the subcontractors and data staff.
• Oversee regulatory compliance activities for the project, including IRB submissions, amendments, renewals, reliance agreements between coordinating sites and subcontractors, Promptly Reportable Incidents (PRI), and NIH RPPR reporting.
• Work across multiple institutions and coordinating sites to ensure compliance with UNC and federal guidelines and implement corrective actions, staff training, and interviewer guidance as needed to support compliance and data quality.
• Directly supervise multiple project staff, including an Assistant Project Manager, the Retention Coordinator, the Medical Outcomes Coordinator, and the Biospecimen Coordinator.
• Assign and monitor work, manage timelines and deliverables, support staff training, and ensure effective coordination across project teams and external partners.

Requirements

• Demonstrated experience managing and prioritizing responsibilities across multiple concurrent projects and project components, ensuring alignment of timelines, resources, and deliverables across teams.
• Proven ability to plan, direct, and execute project activities across multiple functional areas, ensuring deliverables are completed on time and within scope.
• Outstanding organizational and management skills as well as excellent interpersonal and communication skills.
• Motivated and takes initiative.
• Able to anticipate and solve problems.
• Works independently along with a demonstrated ability to work and collaborate within and across teams both inside and outside the organization.

Qualifications

• Minimum of one year of experience in managing or directing a complex research project is desirable, preferably within a university setting.
• Experience with field operations for major data collection efforts, especially those involving collection of biological specimens highly desirable.
• Experience using statistical packages (e.g., SAS, Stata) to run descriptive statistics.