Dr. Milton Rosenau became director of the UNC School of Medicine's new Division of Public Health in 1936.

Over the years, the School has grown into seven departments and one program. The departments of epidemiology, environmental sciences and engineering, health policy and management, and public health nursing (now the Public Health Leadership Program) existed when the school was founded. The Department of Health Behavior and Health Education was added in 1942, nutrition (also part of the School of Medicine) in 1946, biostatistics in 1949, and maternal and child health in 1950.

In September 2008, the school was named the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, in recognition of a generous gift from Dennis and Joan Gillings. Dennis Gillings was a biostatistics professor at the School from 1971 to 1988. He met his wife, Joan, at the School, where she was a staff member. Dr. Gillings now is chairman and chief executive officer of Quintiles Transnational Corp. The couple's $50 million donation was the largest in the University's history.

The School of Public Health at UNC has been engaged in overcoming social and health injustices for its entire history. Faculty, students and staff continue this tradition of working collaboratively in communities around North Carolina to overcome barriers to good health for all.

"From its earliest days, the School has had a strong moral compass," said Barbara K. Rimer, DrPH, current dean. "That's why it was a hospitable place for a group of South African anti-apartheid faculty who emigrated here. That's why (the late environmental sciences and engineering professor) Dan Okun and other faculty members marched for civil rights in the 1960s. And that's why a great deal of our research was and is focused on overcoming health disparities."

Faculty members have been coming and going across the world since the School began. For example, Bernard Greenberg, first a chair of biostatistics and later dean of the School, collaborated with colleagues in Egypt and a number of other countries, and our biostatisticians for years have trained their counterparts in Chile.

Today, the School contines to award doctoral, master's and undergraduate degrees and certificates to students who take courses on campus or via the Internet as distance learners. The School has been ranked the top public school of public health (tied with Harvard for #2 overall) since U.S. News and World Report began ranking graduate schools.