Public Health, Students

Welcome 2016

January 7, 2016

 Carolina_PublicHealth_Mag_Fall2015_online

Check out the latest Carolina Public Health magazine and our SPH News Archives for the latest Gillings news.

Below are selected highlights from the last six months. Click on the images throughout this post for more information.

Happy new year!


Our School continues to be a major leader in practice and community health research.


Recognitions and appointments to prestigious committees


Lightfoot honored by APHA for community-based public health research

Alexandra Lightfoot, PhD

Lightfoot honored by APHA for community-based public health research


Peggye Dilworth-Anderson, DrPH

Dilworth-Anderson, expert on aging, to join Global Council on Brain Health


Significant new grants (examples)


In spite of an increasingly competitive national scene, our researchers continued to do extremely well in competing for grants and contracts–~$145,000,000 in the last year. We’ve provided some examples, but see the news archives for many more. What’s really striking is that the research they are doing is global and local, spans the continuum from basic to implementation science and often involves interesting collaborations with other universities (e.g. NC State and Duke).


Hursting receives National Cancer Institute’s Outstanding Investigator Award

Stephen Hursting, PhD

Hursting receives National Cancer Institute’s Outstanding Investigator Award


Steve Meshnick, MD, PhD

Steve Meshnick, MD, PhD

Meshnick awarded $2M CDC grant to study Lyme disease in Rhode Island


(r-l) Laura Linnan, ScD, Jennifer Smith, PhD, and Melissa Troester, PhD

(r-l) Laura Linnan, ScD, Jennifer Smith, PhD, and Melissa Troester, PhD

Three at Gillings School awarded NCI funding to study cancer disparities in African-Americans


2015-12-29_11-45-47

Team from Gillings School chosen to evaluate maternal and newborn interventions in Ethiopia


Our outstanding students (one example)


Gabrielle Jenkins and Kamika Reynolds, doctoral students in epidemiology, and Madison LeCroy and Elyse Powell

Epidemiology, nutrition students honored by The Obesity Society


New partnership (examples)


WHO-global-strategy_graphic2

UNC named by WHO as lead partner in global effort to save millions of lives



Research findings (examples)


Noel Brewer, PhD

Noel Brewer, PhD

Study finds sizeable minority of physicians do not strongly endorse HPV vaccine


Dorothy Cilenti, PhD

Dorothy Cilenti, PhD

Study finds tension between patient-centered and medical home health care models for mothers on Medicaid


Ralph Baric, PhD

Ralph Baric, PhD

New SARS-like virus can jump directly from bats to humans, no treatment available


Many thanks to David Pesci, director of communications, and the rest of our wonderful communications team for all their work year round on our news stories, magazine and website.



Want to leave a comment or contact us?
The views expressed in this blog are Barbara Rimer’s alone and do not represent the views and policies of The University of North Carolina or the Gillings School.