UNC School of Public Health - Areas of expertise

The UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill has a 50-year history of global health leadership and innovation. Our cutting-edge research programs focus on high-impact, practical applications, with potential to benefit millions in the developing world. Our partnerships with governments, nonprofits, and communities have accelerated solutions to many of the pressing global health challenges represented by the Millennium Development Goals. Our students become global health leaders who continue to apply the entrepreneurial, out-of-the-box thinking that characterizes our School to the health challenges their countries face. We use creative, innovative approaches spanning health, business, and other fields to address human needs.

We have been consistently ranked as the number one school of public health in a public university and one of the three top public health schools in the US. Our global leadership position was formalized in September 2008, when we became the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. We are currently working in more than 45 countries. Our strengths include:

Infectious diseases. Our interdisciplinary approach focuses on HIV/AIDS, malaria, TB, and other emerging and re-emerging infections. We are pioneering work on malaria, TB and HIV/AIDS in Malawi, Madagascar, South Africa and the Congo; addressing adolescent vulnerability to HIV and other sexually transmitted infections in South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, and Haiti, and developing stronger health systems in China, Malawi, and India. In the Americas, we are building public health preparedness into Guatemala's health system, strengthening surveillance in Nicaragua and Guatemala, and developing biostatistical and training collaborations in Chile and Brazil. In India, we are collaborating with the Public Health Foundation of India to develop more effective surveillance and integrative responses to zoonotic diseases, such as rabies and avian influenza. Our Gillings Innovation Labs are developing state-of-the-art methods to map and control diseases like malaria and deliver vaccines more rapidly, cheaply, and effectively.

Global nutrition. Nutrition problems -from under-nutrition to obesity - are a cornerstone of our global work on human nutrition from the molecular to the policy level. Founded in 2005, the Interdisciplinary Obesity Center at the University of North Carolina has emerged as a major national and global resource in the area of obesity research. Its 75 scientists from many disciplines--including national and international leaders--form a critical mass of expertise in virtually every area of obesity-related research. The new Nutrition Research Institute in Kannapolis, which is part of our top-rated Nutrition Department, is finding ways to use nutrition to enhance brain development and prevent and treat diabetes, cancer, and other nutrition-related diseases - issues highly relevant to transitional economies such as India, Russia and China, where malnutrition and poverty exist side-by-side with rising rates of obesity and chronic diseases such as diabetes. Our faculty has coined the term "nutrition transition" to explain these changes. We are working with the Public Health Foundation of India to plan a Center for Excellence in Nutrition, which will focus on using cutting-edge methodology to address problems of chronic under-nutrition, obesity, and all the related complications affecting India.

Clean water and air. We are internationally known for our innovative work on clean water and sanitation, water harvesting, urban air pollution, and toxic chemicals in the environment. We are unique among schools of public health in having a department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering - one of the top ten departments in the US - within our school. This ensures strong links and cross fertilization between environmental and human health efforts. Our decades of experience in working with governments around the world includes our current partnership with the United Arab Emirates, one of the fastest developing nations in the world, where we are helping to build a strategy to reduce environmental health risks. Our evaluations of safe water filtration and treatment technologies have built our reputation among international organizations as the "gold standard" to use when choosing effective water interventions. In Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, we are developing entrepreneurial, market-based approaches to scale up and sustain point-of-use safe water and sanitation programs. Gillings Innovation Laboratories are developing portable field-testing equipment and technologies to detect arsenic exposure from contaminated drinking water. Our School will soon launch a Global Water Institute, and our faculty has a leading role in UNC's Institute for the Environment, which combines public health, medicine, law, government, business, and mass communications.

Health of women and children. Our recent designation as a WHO Collaborating Center for Sexual and Reproductive Health reflects our global leadership in this arena. We are also known for our work in infant and young child feeding, early childhood development, and family violence. UNC hosts the longstanding USAID-funded MEASURE Evaluation project, which assists countries to use data to plan, manage, evaluate, and set policy for population, health, and nutrition programs. MEASURE is internationally recognized for the metrics and indicators it has developed to assess the impact of reproductive health programs worldwide.

Public health leadershipand management. Our diverse faculty is working to strengthen health systems, build leadership and management capacity, and assess cost-effectiveness of different health care models and interventions. Considered the leader among public health schools in distance learning for over 30 years, we have extended the reach of our MPH, DrPH, and certificate programs to reach health professionals in distant field stations around the world. We have established long term capacity-building relationships with universities in a number of countries, notably Malawi, Guatemala, China, Chile, Brazil, and India. Our Malawi-Carolina Summer Institute pairs our students and faculty with Malawian counterparts for teaching and internships.

Exercise program in China.
Over the next five years we plan to consolidate and further strengthen our research and training programs in global health. We recognize that the most pressing health challenges and emerging diseases know no boundaries: global health is local health. We will continue to find unique and innovative ways to reduce the spread of diseases, improve healthcare delivery systems, and address global health disparities. We will utilize the collaborative, interdisciplinary approach that is our trademark to look for transformative changes that can be scaled up to affect millions of lives. We will also work with our faculty, staff. and students to build momentum and interest in global public health issues in the US and seek more effective ways to shape the next generation of scientists, policymakers, and leaders. We will seek new partnerships - with leading foundations, corporations, and individual change agents - in order to respond to the public health challenges and opportunities that we will face in the decades ahead.

Last updated October 07, 2011