Professorship Honors Longtime Faculty Member Earp

A nationally recognized health behavior researcher and educator, Earp is former chair of health behavior and professor emerita who mentored hundreds of students and faculty during her 45-year tenure. Fittingly, a professor she recruited to UNC, Kurt Ribisl, PhD, is the first Jo Anne Earp Distinguished Professor of health behavior.

Ribisl is chair of the Department of Health Behavior at Gillings and leads the cancer prevention and control program at UNC’s Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, which is headed by Earp’s husband, H. Shelton (“Shelley”) Earp, MD. Seeing Ribisl’s potential to excel both in cancer and public health, the Earps recruited him together to UNC’s faculty 20 years ago. 

“I am proud to have been part of Gillings — it’s the best public health school in the country — and I spent 45 years growing the department into the best community health behavior department in the country,” she says. “I have a strong interest in its continued success.”

Best known for reducing the racial gap in breast cancer screening, diagnosis and treatment in eastern North Carolina, Earp also studied high-risk behaviors among persons with,  or at risk for, STDs and AIDS. She created and taught UNC-Chapel Hill’s first women’s health class, developed the department’s first course on social and behavioral research methods, and co-edited the first textbook on patient advocacy with Elizabeth French, MA, assistant dean for strategic initiatives, for her patient advocacy elective course.

“For me, it’s about the people,” says Earp, who won several awards from Gillings and the University for her mentoring and teaching. “I was a good researcher and did hard research. But at the end of the day, it’s about the students, advisees, assistant professors and associate professors I mentored, and the people in the communities where I worked. They all gave me as much as I gave them.”