HC&P student Meredith Niess gathers information about biosand water filter use during her practicum experience in the Dominican Republic.

The twofold mission of the HC&P program and its faculty is to provide the highest quality education in population sciences for medical students, residents, fellows, and others who have clinical science backgrounds, and to help its students and alumni integrate population and clinical sciences into a life course that will prepare them to contribute to improving the health of communities and populations as well as individual patients.

Today, from its home in the Public Health Leadership Program (PHLP) in the School of Public Health, and with continued collaboration and critical support from the School of Medicine, the HC&P program offers its students a broad, flexible program tailored to their needs while creating the infrastructure within which they can master all the core competencies of the MPH, with a special focus on the integration of clinical, population, and social sciences. The program has educated more than 270 students since its inception. Medical students from UNC and Duke, Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars, and physicians in UNC's Preventive Medicine Residency and Duke's Occupational Medicine Program and Global Health Residency, as well as fellows in several other programs, have earned their MPH degree from HC&P. At present, more than twenty percent of the students in the UNC medical school class of 160 pursue an MPH at some time during medical school.

The program continues to be led by Russell Harris, MD, MPH, with the aid of Co-Associate Directors Anthony Viera, MD, MPH, and Sue Tolleson-Rinehart, PhD.