School News and Awards 2019

2019 marks the 20th anniversary of the North Carolina Institute of Public Health (NCIPH), the cornerstone of the Gillings School’s outreach and practice efforts. 

For the past two decades, NCIPH team members have trained the state’s public health workforce and facilitated collaborative solutions to population health challenges in North Carolina and beyond. 

In addition to celebrating this milestone, NCIPH recently welcomed Douglas W. Urland, MPA, as its new director.

Students

Case Competitions

Aditi Borde, a dual master’s degree student in  healthcare administration at the Gillings School and in business administration at the Kenan-Flagler School of Business, won first place at the Harvard Business School’s Alliance for Health Management Case Competition in Cambridge, Mass.

An interdisciplinary team of students, including Natalie Browne, a master’s of public health student, earned second place at the CLARION National Case Competition in Minneapolis.

Scholarships and Fellowships

Allie Atkeson, Adrienne Lloyd and Laura Ellen Powis were among 19 recipients of the David A. Winston Health Policy Scholarship. Atkeson and Powis are both master’s students in maternal and child health, and Lloyd is a master’s student in health behavior.

Nikki Behnke, master’s in environmental sciences and engineering alumna, is one of 106 students nationwide to receive a David L. Boren Fellowship for 2019.

Kelly Page, master’s in healthcare administration student, received the first Judy Baar Topinka Foundation Scholarship for Health Policy from CAHME (the Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Management Education).

Violetta Saldanha, a first-year master’s student in healthcare administration, was awarded the HCA Corris Boyd Scholarship from the Association of University Programs in Health Administration (AUPHA) and HCA Healthcare.

Busola Sanusi, doctoral candidate in biostatistics, has the Biopharmaceutical Section Scholarship Award from the American Statistical Association (ASA). 

Denise St. Jean, doctoral student in epidemiology, was selected as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Health Policy Research Scholar.

Riley Vickers, doctoral student in environmental engineering, is one of 31 environmental engineering students in the country to win a prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship in 2019.

Recognitions

Jessica Soldavini, MPH, RD, LDN, doctoral student in nutrition, won the 2019 Rise Against Hunger World Hunger Leadership Award and was named an American Society for Nutrition (ASN) Science Policy Fellow. 

Melissa Stockton, a doctoral student in epidemiology, has received a Fulbright United States Student Program award, announced by the U.S. Department of State and the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board for the 2019-2020 academic year. She is working in Malawi to assess the validity of depression screening tools among patients beginning HIV care.

Caitlin Williams, doctoral student in maternal and child health, has been selected as a member of American Journal of Public Health’s 2019 Student Think Tank.

Faculty

Appointments

Ralph S. Baric, PhD, was named William R. Kenan, Jr. Distinguished Professor of epidemiology. His appointment is one of seven Kenan professorships granted across the University.

Mark Holmes, PhD, professor of health policy and management and director of the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research, was appointed to a four-year term on the National Advisory Committee on Rural Health and Human Services.

Jonathan Oberlander, PhD, professor of health policy and management, has been named editor of the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law (JHPPL), a bimonthly peer-reviewed publication that covers health policy and health law as they relate to politics. 

John Wiesman, DrPH, Gillings alumnus and adjunct assistant professor in health policy and management, has been named co-chair of the Presidential Advisory Council on AIDS and received the Harriet Hylton Barr Distinguished Alumni Award.

Awards

Allison Aiello, PhD, professor of epidemiology, and Sherman James, PhD, former professor of epidemiology at Gillings and currently the Susan B. King Emeritus Professor of Public Policy at Duke University, received awards from the Society for Epidemiologic Research for their outstanding achievements and contributions to the field.

Amanda Holliday, MS, assistant professor of nutrition, won the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics’ Outstanding Dietetics Educator Award.

Michael R. Kosorok, PhD, W.R. Kenan, Jr. Distinguished Professor and chair of biostatistics, received the American Statistical Association’s Noether Senior Scholar Award, one of the ASA’s most prestigious awards.

Sheila Leatherman, MSW, professor of health policy and management, received the Presidential Citation for Distinguished Service Award for her work to  improve the quality of care for those in lower and middle-income countries.

Elizabeth Mayer-Davis, PhD, the Cary C. Boshamer Distinguished Professor of nutrition and medicine, and chair of the Department of Nutrition, received the American Diabetes Association (ADA) 2019 Kelly West Award for Outstanding Achievement in Epidemiology.

Beth Moracco, PhD, associate professor of health behavior, and Karin Yeatts, PhD, associate professor of epidemiology, received the Gillings School’s Edward G. McGavran Award for Excellence in Teaching. 

Kari North, PhD, professor of epidemiology, was honored by the Obesity Society with the 2018 Shiriki Kumanyika Diversity and Disparities Leadership Award.

Herbert Peterson, MD, FACOG, William R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor of maternal and child health, was inducted as a Fellow Honoris Causa of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG).

Barry M. Popkin, PhD, W.R. Kenan, Jr. Distinguished Professor of nutrition, received the Gillings School’s John E. Larsh Jr. Award for Mentorship.

Sara (Sally) Pritchard Herndon, MPH, 1980 alumna and adjunct instructor in health behavior, received the 2019 Ronald H. Levine Legacy Award from the NC Department of Health and Human Services.

Victor Schoenbach, PhD, associate professor of epidemiology emeritus, was given the American College of Epidemiology’s (ACE’s) Abraham Lilienfeld Award. 

Pam Silberman, JD, DrPH, professor of health policy and management and the director of the Executive Doctoral Program in Health Leadership, received the Lifetime Champion of Justice Award from the North Carolina Justice Center and the North Carolina Governor’s Order of the Long Leaf Pine award.

Kavita Singh Ongechi, PhD, associate professor of maternal and child health, has been awarded the University’s Philip and Ruth Hettleman Prize for Artistic and Scholarly Achievement by Young Faculty, one of the University’s most prestigious acknowledgments of faculty excellence.

Gary Rozier, DDS, MPH, professor emeritus of health policy and management, received the North Carolina Oral Health Equity Champion Award.

Jill Stewart, PhD, associate professor of environmental sciences and engineering and deputy director of the Galápagos Initiative and the Center of Galápagos Studies, received the Bernard G. Greenberg Alumni Endowment Award.

Jane Weintraub, DDS, MPH, Alumni Distinguished Professor of dental ecology and adjunct professor of health policy and management, was named winner of the 2018 John W. Knutson Distinguished Service Award in Dental Public Health by the Oral Health Section of the American Public Health Association (APHA) and was selected as the first recipient of the R. Gary Rozier and Chester W. Douglass Distinguished Professorship in Dental Public Health.

Steven Zeisel, MD, PhD, Kenan Distinguished University Professor in nutrition and pediatrics, was presented the American Institute for Cancer Research’s (AICR) Distinguished Service Award at the institute’s annual meeting May 16 in Chapel Hill.

Recognitions

Cleo A. Samuel, PhD, assistant professor of health policy and management, was chosen by the National Minority Quality Forum (NMQF) as one of 40 next-generation leaders in minority health under the age of 40.

Jeffrey Simms, MSPH, MDiv, assistant professor of health policy and management and director of student life and alumni relations for the health policy and management department, was selected as the Senior Health Services Executive of the Year by the National Association of Health Services Executives (NAHSE).

Publications

Environmental Science & Technology, the flagship journal of the American Chemical Society (ACS), named an article by Hans Paerl, PhD, on “Mitigating the Expansion of Harmful Algal Blooms Across the Freshwater-to-Marine Continuum,” as its feature article of 2018. Additionally, Environmental Science & Technology Letters selected a paper co-authored by Jason Surratt, PhD, and Yue Zhang, PhD — “Effect of the Aerosol-Phase State on Secondary Organic Aerosol Formation from the Reactive Uptake of Isoprene-Derived Epoxydiols (IEPOX)” — as one of the journal’s five best papers of the past year. 

Clarivate Analytics annually recognizes researchers who have multiple highly cited papers that rank in the top 1 percent of citations in their field — 8 Gillings members were recognized in 2018. 

• Linda Adair, PhD, professor of nutrition; 
• Ralph Baric, PhD, W.R. Kenan, Jr. Distinguished Professor of epidemiology and of microbiology and immunology in the UNC School of Medicine;
• Noel Brewer, PhD, professor of health behavior;
• Myron Cohen, MD, professor of epidemiology, Yeargan-Bate Eminent Distinguished Professor of Medicine, Microbiology and Immunology in the UNC School of Medicine, director of the UNC Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases, and UNC-Chapel Hill associate vice chancellor for global health;
• Kelly Evenson, PhD, professor of epidemiology;
• Hans Paerl, PhD, professor of environmental sciences and engineering at the Gillings School and W.R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor at the UNC Institute of Marine Sciences in Morehead City, N.C.;
• Barry Popkin, PhD, W.R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor of nutrition; and
• Jason Surratt, PhD, professor of environmental sciences and engineering.

Staff

Sara Wajda, MPA, assistant director of development on the advancement team at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, has been named to the Association for Healthcare Philanthropy’s (AHP) 2019 ‘40 Under 40’ list. 

Alumni

Recent graduate Rawan Ajeen, double major in nutrition and psychology, received the fifth annual Susan M. McHale Award for Outstanding Psychological Research for several projects involving psychiatry, nutrition, and the design and interpretation of psychological research. 

Bachelor of Science in Public Health graduates Erin Danford and Abigail Gancz are recipients of a Fulbright United States Student Program awards. Erin Danford will conduct a research project assessing public and private initiatives to recycle plastic waste in Freiburg, Germany, while Gancz has been awarded the UK-Partnership Award in the field of archaeology at Durham University in England.

Corey Davis, JD, MSPH, was selected as one of this year’s “40 Under 40 in Public Health” for his work to advance equity-focused public health law, policy and practice. 

Michele R. Forman, PhD, distinguished professor and head of Purdue University’s Department of Nutrition Science, was honored by the American College of Epidemiology with a Special Award for Epidemiologic Research on Critical and Sensitive Windows for Health Across the Lifespan. She also received the H.A. Tyroler Distinguished Alumni Award in Epidemiology from the Gillings School.

Fred Hargett, BSBA, BSPH (HPM), MAC, and vice chair of the School’s Public Health Foundation board, was selected by Becker’s Healthcare as a “CFO to know” — one of 106 hospital and health system chief financial officers (CFOs) considered by the organization to be outstanding. He is executive vice president and CFO of Novant Health in Winston-Salem, N.C.

Lauren McCullough, PhD, who received a doctorate in epidemiology from Gillings in 2013 and is now a faculty member at Emory University, received a Society for Epidemiologic Research award for her outstanding achievements and contributions to the field. 

Lanakila “Ku” McMahan, MPH, PhD, received a Distinguished Young Alumni Award from the UNC-Chapel Hill General Alumni Association for his work with Securing Water for Food: A Grand Challenge for Development in the United States Global Development Lab at USAID.

Maya Nadimpalli, PhD, a master’s and doctoral alumna of the Gillings School’s Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, was featured in Nature magazine’s Career Q&A on her work to eradicate antibiotic resistance among children in developing nations. 

Anna Maria Siega-Riz, PhD, an alumna of and former professor and associate dean at Gillings, was named dean of the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s (UMass Amherst) School of Public Health and Health Sciences.

Celette Sugg Skinner, PhD, alumna and adjunct professor of health behavior and chair of the Gillings School’s Public Health Foundation board, was appointed chair of the Department of Clinical Sciences at the University of Texas (UT) Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.

Dana Weston, MHA, FACHE, was named a “Most Admired CEO of 2019” by the Triangle Business Journal. She is president and CEO of UNC Rockingham Health Care in Eden, N.C. 

Selected Grants

Gillings faculty received $13 million from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) to implement the Supporting Maternal Health Innovation Program to help states improve maternal health outcomes. Primary investigator Dorothy Cilenti, DrPH, associate professor of maternal and child health, and primary co-investigators Sarah Verbiest, DrPH, adjunct faculty in maternal and child health and associate professor in UNC’s School of Social Work, and Alison Stuebe, MD, Distinguished Scholar in Infant and Young Child Feeding at the Gillings School and associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at UNC’s School of Medicine, will establish a premier national resource center that will provide training, technical assistance and capacity-building to states. The resource center will leverage existing expertise in maternal and child health systems to reduce maternal death and severe illness through innovative, evidence-based strategies.

Penny Gordon-Larsen, PhD, professor of nutrition and associate dean for research and a multidisciplinary team of researchers, including Christy Avery, PhD, associate professor of epidemiology; Kari North, PhD, professor of epidemiology; and Susan Sumner, PhD; professor of nutrition, have received a $6.2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health’s National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute to study how the body’s metabolic processes influence obesity-related cardiovascular disease (CVD).

Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Stanford University and Washington University in St. Louis have received a five-year, $11.6 million National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant to study retail tobacco policies across the United States. Kurt Ribisl, Jo Anne Earp Distinguished Professor and chair of health behavior at Gillings and program leader for Cancer Prevention and Control at the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, is one of the principal investigators. He and Shelley Golden, assistant professor of health behavior will co-lead a study mapping 275,000 tobacco retailers across the U.S. from 2000 to 2016 and exploring the relationship between the density of these retailers and tobacco-related illnesses, like cancer. 

Gillings researchers are leading a $51.8 million grant award that is part of the National Institutes of Health’s Helping to End Addiction Long-term (HEAL) Initiative, a research effort including 375 grant awards across 41 states that aims to improve treatments for chronic pain, curb the rates of opioid use disorder and overdose, and achieve long-term recovery from opioid addiction. Lisa LaVange, PhD, professor and associate chair of biostatistics, is principal investigator for the “Back Pain Consortium (BACPAC) Research Program Data Integration, Algorithm Development and Operations Management Center (DAC),” a translational, patient-centered effort to address the need for effective personalized therapies for chronic low back pain.

School Honors

The Gillings School received the 2019 Health Professions Higher Education Excellence in Diversity (HEED) Award from INSIGHT Into Diversity magazine for its outstanding commitment to and ongoing promotion of inclusive excellence. Gillings was one of only two schools of public health to win this award, and it is the first year any schools of public health have received this recognition.

Healthy Eating Research, a national program of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, finds that UNC’s NAPSACC (Nutrition and Physical Activity  

Self-Assessment for Child Care) has the “best evidence for impact” on obesity prevention in young children. Developed by the UNC Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention housed at Gillings, NAPSACC is an evidence-based program with a proven track record of reducing childhood obesity risk by helping child care providers create environments that foster healthy eating and physical activity.

US News & World Report rankings: For the third consecutive year, Gillings was ranked the top public school of public health and tied for second, or ranked second, overall. Since these rankings first began in 1987, Gillings has been ranked among the top three schools of public health.

In Memoriam

John Joseph Baxter Anderson, PhD, professor emeritus of nutrition, passed away August 21 at UNC Hospitals. He was 85. In 1972, he became an assistant professor of nutrition in the UNC School of Public Health, was promoted to professor in 1977 and held that position until his retirement in 2007. He became a professor emeritus upon his retirement and continued to work in his office almost daily. He never stopped writing, and he was working to complete a project for publication at the time of his death.

Mario C. Battigelli, MD, a former faculty member of the Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering (ESE) at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, passed away September 27. He was 91. Born in Florence, Italy, he accepted a joint faculty appointment at the UNC Schools of Public Health and Medicine in 1965.  

His career was characterized by a devotion to public health — particularly the environmental causes of occupational lung diseases. He worked all his life to defend and protect the sacredness of human labor, highlighting its physical, medical, ethical, psychological and spiritual dignity.

Joan Cornoni Huntley, PhD, former assistant professor of epidemiology at Gillings, died August 5 at North Carolina Memorial Hospital. She was 88. Huntley served as president of the UNC School of Public Health Alumni Association and vice president of the UNC School of Public Health Foundation. In 1999, she was awarded the H.A. Tyroler Distinguished Alumni Award in recognition of the substantial impact she had over her career in the field of epidemiology. Outside of work, Huntley was a world traveler and an avid collector of antiques and art.