Trenette Clark Goings, PhD

Trenette Clark Goings, Ph.D., is the Sandra Reeves Spears and John B. Turner Distinguished Professor at UNC School of Social Work and founding director of the INSPIRED Lab at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research focuses on racial and ethnic health disparities with a primary emphasis on the epidemiology, etiology, and prevention of substance use and other risky behaviors among youth and emerging adults of color.

Dr. Goings is an international expert in substance use prevention among youth and emerging adults of color. Her work has been consistently funded — mostly by the National Institutes of Health — and has yielded publications in leading peer-reviewed journals including Drug & Alcohol Dependence, Addiction, Development & Psychopathology, Addictive Behaviors, and Health Psychology. She is currently principal investigator of two major grants funded by NIH/NIDA and SAMHSA.

She serves on several national committees, including the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and the Society for Social Work and Research. She is a recipient of the very competitive and prestigious Society for Social Work and Research Deborah K. Padgett Early Career Achievement Award. She was also awarded the Wallace Kuralt Early Career Professorship at UNC School of Social Work and the Making a Difference PhD Alumni Award from the School of Social Work at Virginia Commonwealth University. She is currently an associate member in the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center at UNC-Chapel Hill. She is also a faculty affiliate in the Center for Contextual Genetics & Prevention Science at the University of Georgia and in the Global Social Development Innovations research center at UNC-Chapel Hill.