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The UNC School of Public Health's North Carolina Institute for Public Health is collaborating with the University of the West Indies to create the Caribbean Health Leadership Institute -- a five-year, $2 million initiative to enhance health leadership and management capacity in the Caribbean and fight the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the region.

The rate of HIV infection in the Caribbean is the second highest in the world, after Africa, according to United Nations figures, with an estimated 230,000 people in the Caribbean living with the disease. An estimated 11,000 people in the Caribbean died of AIDS in 2007, and AIDS remains a leading cause of death among people ages 25 to 44.

The new Institute -- funded by the Global AIDS Program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) -- will use onsite and distance learning activities, individual assessment and coaching, team projects, and a competency-based curriculum to train public health leaders in ways to improve regional HIV/AIDS programs. The program is scheduled to launch on June 2, 2008, in Jamaica, when 25 participants from across the English-speaking countries of the Caribbean will begin their training.

The N.C. Institute for Public Health (NCIPH) is providing consultation and technical assistance to staff at the University of the West Indies (UWI) to design, conduct and evaluate the new program. UWI staff spent several days in Chapel Hill, N.C., in Caribbean Health Leadership Institute to launch this June December 2007, working on program design with staff from both NCIPH and the Center for Creative Leadership -- a Greensboro, N.C.-based leadership development organization.

In February, three UWI staffers completed a two-week "train-the-trainer" session in Greensboro, titled "Leading Across Boundaries." The session brought together individuals from Africa, India and the Caribbean who work in leadership development roles.

Dr. Brendan Bain will direct the new Institute. Bain is professor of community health at the UWI, lead coordinator for the University's HIV/AIDS Response Program and regional director of the Caribbean HIV/ AIDS Regional Training Network.

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Carolina Public Health is a publication of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health. To subscribe to Carolina Public Health or to view the entire Spring 2008 issue in PDF, visit www.sph.unc.edu/cph.