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Consistently ranked by the U.S. News & World Report as one of the top health policy and administration programs in the U.S., we have distinguished ourselves with our collaborative learning environment, first-rate research and outstanding faculty.

 
NEWS

Entrepreneurial teams from School win first and second prize in Kenan-Flagler Carolina Challenge

Entrepreneurial teams of students and faculty from the UNC School of Public Health took first and second prize in the 2008 Carolina Challenge entrepreneurial business-plan competition sponsored by the UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School on April 19.

Competing against 15 other teams, the two teams won $22,500 worth of prize money to be used in developing their entrepreneurial ventures.

“Carolina Liquid Assets,” a team of students from the UNC School of Public Health and the UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School, won first prize — the $15,000 John Stedman Social Entrepreneurship Award — for their business plan to manufacture and distribute ceramic water purifiers in Cambodia. They hope eventually to scale the operation throughout Southeast Asia and beyond.

The Carolina Liquid Assets team includes Health Policy and Administration Executive Master's student Kate Rademacher. Other Carolina Liquid Assets team members include Ben Aiken, an environmental sciences and engineering master’s student; Lindsey Witmer, an environmental sciences and engineering bachelor’s student; and Sara Abdoulayi, a business administration master’s student at Kenan-Flagler.

“There was definite support and leverage provided through the Gillings Innovation Lab program,” says Tom Outlaw, a business administration master’s student at Kenan-Flagler, member of the Carolina Global Water Partnership and team captain of Carolina Liquid Assets.

“Carolina Liquid Assets was the nom de plume to compete in the Carolina Challenge and leverage the work that had already been done through the Carolina Global Water Partnership and specifically, to develop a business plan that is part of the deliverable that the Global Water Partnership is designed to produce.”

The World Health Organization estimates that nearly 2 million children die each year from diarrhea and related illnesses caused by unsafe drinking water and inadequate hygiene and sanitation. UNC School of Public Health research has demonstrated that the use of ceramic water filters (and also concrete biosand filters) reduces the incidence of diarrhea by up to 40 percent.

“We know that biosand and ceramic filters and other household water treatment technologies make an enormous difference in the health of people who don’t have access to clean drinking water,” says Dr. Mark Sobsey, Kenan Distinguished University Professor of environmental sciences and engineering, who has researched the efficacy of these devices in removing waterborne pathogens and reducing diarrheal disease. “We have the technologies, but now it’s a matter of finding ways to get these technologies into communities and households, and have people adopt and use them effectively and sustainably.”

Rademacher said the business plan for the ceramic filter project was further developed this spring through a public health entrepreneurship graduate certificate program launched this semester by UNC School of Public Health faculty in collaboration with the Carolina Entrepreneurial Initiative at Kenan-Flagler. The new program offers graduate students, post-docs and fulltime faculty and staff opportunities to explore how entrepreneurship is changing their fields and how to conceive, plan and execute new commercial and nonprofit ventures.

Applied Microproducts, Inc., won second prize ($7,500) in the competition’s commercial category. The company, developed by Environmental Sciences and Engineering Professor Dr. Frederic Pfaender, in conjunction with others, makes environmentally-friendly wood-treatment products for industry utility poles to replace the hazardous materials currently used.

“All the materials we use in our product are food-grade materials,” Pfaender says. “In fact, you could eat them. We are replacing hazardous materials with materials that are on the Food and Drug Administration’s list of materials generally regarded as safe.”

School of Public Health contact: Ramona DuBose, director of communications, (919) 966-7467 or ramona_dubose@unc.edu.

HPAA Associate Professor delivers 40th Annual Fred T. Foard Jr. Memorial Lecture

Jonathan B. Oberlander, associate professor of health policy and administration, UNC School of Public Health, and associate professor of social medicine, UNC School of Medicine, gave the 40th Annual Fred T. Foard Jr. Memorial Lecture last week on the topic of Health Care Reform and the 2008 Presidential Candidates.

Dr. Oberlander is author of The Political Life of Medicare (University of Chicago Press, 2003) and co-editor of a three-volume series (The Social Medicine Reader, 2nd ed.) published by Duke University Press in 2005. His research interests include Medicare, health politics, health care reform both nationally and at the state level, and American public policy.

Before coming to UNC-Chapel Hill, Dr. Oberlander was Robert Wood Johnson Visiting Scholar in health policy at the University of California-Berkeley and a Research Fellow in governmental studies at the Brookings Institution. He holds a Ph.D. and a M.A. in political science from Yale University, and a B.A. in political science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Dr. Oberlander currently has a Greenwall Foundation Faculty Fellowship in Bioethics and in 2003 and 2004 received Teaching Excellence Awards from the UNC School of Medicine. He is a recipient of the 2006 Phillip and Ruth Hettleman Prize for Artistic and Scholarly Achievement by Young Faculty at UNC-Chapel Hill.

See a full webcast and slides of his presentation.

UNC’s Doctoral Program in Health Leadership – the world’s first distance DrPH program – prepares mid-career professionals for senior-level positions in organizations working domestically and internationally to improve the public’s health.

The three-year, cohort-based distance program confers a DrPH in Health Administration. With the exception of three short visits to Chapel Hill in each of years one and two, learning takes place in participants’ homes and offices, away from the UNC campus. Students connect to the faculty and peers mainly via computer, making substantial use of state-of-the-art technology that allows students and faculty to interact productively and which supports live video, audio, and data sharing.

The distance format allows working professionals to complete doctoral leadership training while continuing full-time employment, remaining in-country throughout the duration of their education. The success of our model has been documented by program evaluations during the past three years and via demonstrated progress of students in the program.

Building upon this innovative model, we now aim to accelerate the pace and reach of urgently needed doctoral-level leadership training for senior health professionals around the world by creating an international network of partner programs. Work has been initiated to develop a global DrPH health leadership consortium. Members will share curriculum and technology best practices, faculty and school resources, encourage student exchange, and function as a unified network, collaborating with public and private stakeholders on strategic efforts to build health leadership and management capacity within the U.S. and globally. Students will be able to take selected core courses from any partner school for credit.

Individual schools will be able to modify the UNC curriculum to reflect specialized interests and/or expertise.

We hope to convene a meeting comprised of a small group of potential program partners and other distance education and DrPH experts in late 2008 or early 2009 in Chapel Hill to discuss consortium goals, core requirements and academic programming issues, identify and address barriers and opportunities, and discuss logistics and next steps. 

For more information, contact Suzanne Havala Hobbs, DrPH, Program Director at suzanne_hobbs@unc.edu.