Dr. Roach is currently an Assistant Professor at The University of Tennessee Health Science Center with a joint appointment in the College of Nursing in the department of Community and Population Health and a secondary appointment in the College of Medicine in the department of Genetics, Genomics, Informatics.

Dr. Roach is an early-career nurse scientist with a passion to understand and address acute and chronic pain in patients living with sickle cell disease. She has expertise in genomics, proteomics, and pain science. Dr. Roach’s early work focused on characterizing sensory pain in healthy African American adults. Her lab is focused on understanding the combination of omics and biopsychological factors related to pain phenotypes in adults. Dr. Roach’s research populations include persons of African ancestry, most notably persons with sickle cell disease or cancer. 

Dr. Roach is a primary investigator on an NHLBI-funded K01 grant award, “Contributions of Biopsychosocial Factors in Sickle Cell Disease Pain” and a small research project also funded by NHLBI. Her research has been funded by the NHLBI, NIA, and NHGRI. This work has resulted in 34 publications and over 60 presentations. She is Robert Wood Johnson Future of Nursing Scholar alum.

Building on a career as a critical care nurse, the long-term goal of her research program is to eliminate uncontrolled pain by understanding the genetic variability that underpins symptoms in pain populations who are at risk for high morbidity and mortality such as sickle cell disease and cancer.