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Since February 2022, Robert Smith III, PhD, has served as the vice dean of the Gillings School. In this role, his two key goals are, in his words, “to eliminate redundancies and reduce inefficiencies.” Prior to joining the Gillings School, Smith spent 10 years at the UNC School of Medicine, most recently as associate chair for administration in the department of neurology. A graduate of the University of Virginia, Smith’s commitment to public health goes back to his childhood where, as a young man, he earned the nickname “Doc.”

Smith provides operational leadership to the Gillings School during a time of transition — when the pandemic has changed many of our assumptions about work and the role of public health in society. Old habits of work and learning are being examined, and he brings his experience with “The Future of Work” from his time at the School of Medicine.

Smith is a seasoned leader, lecturer, manager, administrator and training consultant, with more than 20 years of experience.

Outside of work, Smith is an avid cyclist, dating back to his time as a member of the Piedmont Flyers cycling team.

Smith riding in the MS150 fundraiser for multiple sclerosis

In September 2022, Professor of Practice John Wiesman, DrPH, MPH, was named the Gillings School’s associate dean for practice. In this role, he will provide guidance to achieve the school’s vision and goals for practice.

Last year, the school began development of a 2028 Strategic Plan and started creating one for public health practice in October 2021. A task force, co-chaired by Wiesman and Professor of Practice Leah Devlin, DDS, MPH, was charged to “define, organize and operationalize practice to achieve a 21st century vision of practice at Gillings.” The Dean’s Council formally approved the plan at the end of July.

The practice vision for 2028 calls for Gillings to elevate and support practice so we can help communities meet public health opportunities and challenges and help our students gain on-the-ground experience. In doing this work, we are committing to being community centered, equity driven and local-to-global.

Four exciting initiatives for implementation:

1. Identifying a small number of geographic areas with critical equity challenges and low resources in which we will create and sustain 5-10 year public health partnerships.
2. Developing a public health collaborative to help communities address challenging public health practice issues.
3. Partnering with other university public health programs in North Carolina, historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and DHHS to create a system of academic partnerships with health departments and other health organizations across the state to improve the workforce.
4. Assessing the Gillings School’s emergency preparedness and response work to prepare for the next public health crisis.

See the full plan.

Recent actions across six priority areas include:

• A venue for student feedback and inclusive excellence training programs, which have had 95% participation from faculty and staff and 45% participation from students,
• New requirements for courses and a review process that acknowledges faculty members for facilitating discussions around equity issues in the classroom,
• Improved approaches to communicating inclusive excellence, equity and anti-racism through our website, promotional materials, artwork and course syllabi,
• Equitable funding for research assistantships, teaching assistantships and scholarships, which have positively impacted students across demographics,
• Training for admissions committee members, removal of the GRE requirement for graduate programs, earlier communication of funding packages and the creation of a more welcoming culture at Gillings, which have resulted in a large increase in diversity of our student body, and
• Increased funding for research related to health equity and a faculty award to acknowledge outstanding contributions to equity within a pressing public health issue.

Kim Ramsey-White, PhD, joined the Gillings School as associate dean for inclusive excellence in 2022. Her deep experience implementing diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, and a research portfolio focused on education reform initiatives, health disparities and social capital, ensure our school is in good hands and progress will continue on this core piece of our mission.

Gillings students chat outside of Rosenau Hall.

What sparked your interest in public health?

After taking a year after college to work in a laboratory, in some ways I was on a traditional path to being a clinical doctor. During medical school, I spent a summer at the Frontier Nursing Service, which is the first school of midwifery in the United States and a prime example of public health in clinical care. I then started my residency in internal medicine. While I concentrated on primary care at the Veterans Administration during my third year, I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do in the future.

Then I heard about the Epidemic Intelligence Service Fellowship at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It sounded fun and adventurous; I thought I’d only be there for two years before going back to my clinical career. My first outbreak brought me, a city girl from Philadelphia, to a town in rural Texas where I did a study that led to modifications in a vaccine strategy for the community. Instead of treating patients one-by-one, I could have an impact on an entire population. I liked the practice, but I also liked the science — learning epidemiology tools and applying them to a problem. The CDC was a community full of like-minded people, and within six months, I knew I wasn’t ever going to go back to be an academic clinician.

Experiences there helped me realize the amazing potential of a vaccine. Unlike some interventions, giving the right vaccine at the right time to the right population can dramatically impact a disease right away. If you have the correct implementation strategy, you can use science to make a dramatic impact on our population so quickly.

What is your advice for future public health leaders?

Say yes to things.

Take advantage of every opportunity to learn something new, even if you can’t see where the end point might take you. At CDC, I had the great pleasure of working across a variety of things in addition to vaccines. I didn’t necessarily know where some of the projects were headed, but I got to do great work with great people, and I learned something from everything. At the time, I viewed it as just working on another project, but in retrospect, I’ve come to realize that broad exposure to different experiences can really impact your trajectory.

I remember my very first step into a leadership position. I wasn’t going to apply to it because I was really happy doing research on the front lines, but one of my mentors convinced me that the leadership development would be beneficial. I’m thankful for that encouragement, and I’m glad I said yes. My time at the Skoll Foundation, my time at UNC — sometimes we have to be willing to take the next step.

Don’t be afraid to say yes. Don’t be afraid to fail at something.

Who are you when you’re at home?

I’m a mom. I’m a wife. I’m a friend. I have three cats and a dog — I don’t exactly know how that happened.

I think I’m a quieter person at home. Especially after the pandemic, I’ve come to appreciate being in community with the people I care about, learning new things and meeting new people.

I like to cook. I like to travel. I like to be outside. I love playing fetch with my dog, Scout, who reliably brings the ball back to me every time. It’s reinvigorating to be in nature and be astonished by things. Even the smallest things. It’s fall right now, and the leaves are beautiful. I never want to lose my appreciation of those things.

My dog, Scout.

Dr. Ciara Zachary’s work focuses on health policy research and advocacy to increase access to affordable, high-quality health coverage, especially for underserved populations.

Prior to joining the Gillings School, she led several policy advocacy initiatives and lobbied state and federal lawmakers to improve health care programs. She frequently worked with grassroots and grasstops partners across North Carolina on policy issues, including Medicaid transformation and expansion and the Affordable Care Act.

In addition to her advocacy work, Dr. Zachary has extensive experience in state and federal health policy analysis, as well as in program evaluation for diverse communities. Through her experiences working with diverse stakeholders, Dr. Zachary is passionate about understanding how health policy impacts health equity and health disparities.

Dr. Justin Lessler is a professor in the Department of Epidemiology researching the dynamics and control of infectious disease, with particular interest in SARS-CoV-2, influenza, cholera and dengue. Dr. Lessler works on the development and application of statistics, dynamic models and novel study designs to better understand and control infectious disease. His goal is for holistic data to inform policy and decisions about the response to disease threats.

Dr. Lessler helped launch the COVID-19 Scenario Modeling Hub, which brings together multiple groups that work on COVID-19 modeling to answer shared questions and interact with federal and local policy makers. By synergizing results from multiple models, the hub can offer robust projections of COVID-19 throughout the course of the epidemic under different scenarios at a six-month time scale.

As the No. 1 public school of public health in the country, the Gillings School has become a source of guidance and authority amidst a global pandemic.

This has led to more engagement from the community in the form of rising student applications, growth in our residential and online programs, and exponential increases in our media and social media visibility.

The communications and marketing team leads a multipronged external mission that aids in the recruitment of students, faculty and staff and educates the public about advancements in public health while leading a robust media relations practice. Our internal mission must serve both the school and the university at large by collaborating across schools and units, supporting departments, alumni communications and central administrative units, all the while keeping our inclusive excellence goals front and center.

As the media landscape changes, we are finding new and unique ways to make communication more accessible. In the wake of COVID-19, we will continue to position the School as a leader in tackling health challenges, dismantling systems that contribute to inequities and combating disinformation.

Two faculty members recently reached milestones by launching interdisciplinary ventures that will move their valuable ideas into the world, where they can make the greatest social and economic impact possible. Both have taken advantage of resources in the innovation ecosystem at UNC and Gillings.

• ‍SORBENTA: Drs. Orlando Coronell (Gillings School) and Frank Leibfarth (College of Arts and Sciences) developed a material to remove per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), or “forever chemicals,” that have accumulated in drinking water and can lead to serious health issues. Initial testing showed the material outperforms current technology in PFAS removal. The team is now working to de-risk and scale the technology.
• ‍CollectiveGoodDx: Drs. Sean Sylvia (Gillings School), Joe Tucker (School of Medicine) and Diane Pozefsky (College of Arts and Sciences) created a platform that uses behavioral insights and crowd intelligence to improve diagnostic skills and scale access to care. First they are tackling a diagnostic skill training platform for medical school and residency programs, a need identified by both students and administrators. Their long-term vision is broad — the platform can serve as a tool for clinician consults to solicit peer/specialist advice and as a cost-effective source of second opinions for patients.

In 2007, we received the $50M transformative Gillings Gift supporting cutting-edge public health projects, which helped catalyze a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship at the School. Over the past decade, 50 Gillings-affiliated startups have launched. Since 1970, 73 companies have launched, with 56 that are still active.

The Gillings Innovation Labs (GILs) have stimulated new, disruptive solutions to urgent public health problems. Several GILs were completed this year — addressing topics ranging from COVID-19 prevention behaviors in South Africa, led by Dr. Audrey Pettifor, to the impact of environmental toxins on early brain development, led by Dr. Stephanie Engel. This tallies the program’s overall metric totals for 38 completed labs to over $154M in additional grant funding, 235 students trained or funded, and 225 peer-reviewed journal publications.

In Spring 2022, we piloted the Gillings School Entrepreneurs of Color mentorship program to pair Gillings student entrepreneurs of color with alumni entrepreneurs of color. The 12 students who participated worked with mentors towards their entrepreneurial related goals and would recommend this program to future Gillings students.

READDI is retooling the drug discovery and development process to rapidly develop new broad-spectrum antiviral drug solutions for the future.

These pandemics are bigger than any one university, company or government. A unique public-private partnership accelerated by a global access model, READDI has a goal of developing multiple “on the shelf” clinical assets so that we are prepared for the next global health pandemic.

This global nonprofit initiative leverages experts from UNC’s Gillings School of Global Public Health, School of Medicine and Eshelman School of Pharmacy to collaborate with leaders from industry, government, philanthropic organizations and academic research institutions. Founded by Ralph Baric, PhD (Gillings School), Nat Moorman, PhD, and Mark Heise, PhD, (School of Medicine), and led by CEO, and UNC Gillings Advisory Council member, James Rosen, MBA, MSPH, READDI was initially launched and supported through Carolina’s Creativity Hubs initiative and the Eshelman Institute for Innovation. Funding from the N.C. Collaboratory and N.C. General Assembly, along with support from several members of the N.C. Congressional delegation, has been critical in aiding the team’s work.

In May, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases awarded the Gillings School a $65 million grant to establish an Antiviral Drug Discovery (AViDD) Center to develop oral antivirals that can combat pandemic-level viruses like COVID-19. The center builds upon and is tightly affiliated with READDI.

The READDI-AViDD Center will apply cutting-edge technologies to develop oral therapies that target viral families with high potential to cause a pandemic in the future.