Dr. Robert Goodman’s estate gift funds doctoral students committed to community health, continuing his legacy of advancing social and behavioral change.
As former dean of the Indiana University Bloomington School of Public Health, Robert Goodman, PhD ’87 (health behavior), is deeply aware of the role institutions of higher education play in public health.
When a student at the UNC School of Public Health, Dr. Goodman focused his study on the social and behavioral principles that promote positive changes in community health. He leveraged these principles throughout his career to affect health disparities, address local health concerns via community capacity development and improve organizational effectiveness in health programming. His estate gift will support the next generation of public health scholars by providing funding to doctoral students with a strong commitment to community health.
“My dissertation at Carolina was about how you sustain social movements, like public initiatives that are both community and organizationally based,” said Goodman. “Institutionalizing a legacy for my passion in community public health was important to me. I was thinking about where I would want to plant that kind of legacy, and the Gillings School was my choice.”
The endowment will fund two students in the UNC Gillings Department of Health Behavior in perpetuity.
“Dr. Goodman’s generous gift will provide crucial funding to enable our department to support two doctoral students dedicated to conducting rigorous community-based scholarship,” said Kurt Ribisl, PhD, Jo Anne Earp Distinguished Professor and chair of health behavior. “His financial support is key to allowing us to attract the most talented and promising students to Carolina.”
.jpg)
