NCIPH serves all 100 N.C. counties

The North Carolina Institute for Public Health (NCIPH) is the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health's special link to the public health practice community in North Carolina and beyond.

During the past 10 years, the Institute has reached public health professionals in all 100 counties through its training and continuing education programs. NCIPH offers hundreds of courses and workshops each year in basic competencies and emerging issues, and it provides consultation services to health organizations and agencies. 

Institute programs often unveil "best practices," such as public health department accreditation programs, education projects about teen smoking and HPV vaccines, and training to track outbreaks of infectious disease. Often, North Carolina officials share these findings with other states and with countries throughout the world -- evidence of the public health leadership shown by the state and the Gillings School of Global Public Health.

Officially, the Institute was established on August 16, 1999, by then-dean William Roper, MD, MPH.

"The Institute was created to serve as a bridge between the highest-ranked publicly funded school of public health in the country and the people the school was created to serve," Roper said at the time. "Its goal is to improve the health of all North Carolinians by applying the latest public health knowledge to practice in a way that is responsive to the needs of the people."

NCIPH was established in response to the Institute of Medicine's landmark report, "The Future of Public Health," which pointed out critical gaps in workforce capacity and the need for greater collaboration in advancing public health practice. According to Roper, the Institute would specialize in "training, consulting, research and technical assistance to groups across the state striving to improve public health practice and health care."

The Institute's foundation cemented some already existing practice-oriented programs that were nearly as old as the School, such as continuing education for those in local public health programs, occupational safety and health education and research, home-visit nursing, collaborations with the Area Health Education Centers (AHECs) and, more recently, Public Health Grand Rounds [ link http://www.publichealthgrandrounds.unc.edu/], a collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

We encourage you to read more about the Institute's impact on public health in North Carolina.

• Increasing HPV vaccination to prevent cervical cancer
  
• A course for public health nurses makes a difference
  
• http://www.sph.unc.edu/nciph

-- Bev Holt

Carolina Public Health is a publication of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Gillings School of Global Public Health. To view previous issues, please visit www.sph.unc.edu/cph.