All past articles

Aditi Borde (MHA/MBA, 2020) and Jacqueline Gerhart, (PhD/MBA, 2021), won the 2020 World of Difference student pitch competition, which was held virtually due to COVID-19. Teams lead by Gillings students and alumni competed head-to-head for the chance to win cash and consulting support to bring their idea to life. Their winning proposal leverages a partnership with Walmart and Blue Cross Blue Shield NC to bring an incentivized lifestyle management program to diabetics in rural communities. The Convenient Access for Rural Diabetics (CARD) program will provide convenient, one-stop-shopping for key components of diabetes management — healthy foods, exercise, filling prescriptions, regular A1c testing, retinopathy screens and diabetes education.

Todd Jones

Alumni Association Board (Past Chair)

For Raleigh, N.C. attorney Todd Jones, who earned a bachelor’s degree in health policy and administration from Gillings in 1993, serving on the School’s Alumni Association board was a way to stay connected to the place where everything started.

After graduating, Jones got a job at an internal medical practice in Durham, North Carolina working with 10 physicians – managing schedules, coding medical records, helping patients, ensuring adequate hospital coverage and transitioning the practice into a new facility. As Duke Hospital prepared to acquire the practice, Jones headed to law school at Campbell University. He’s now a managing partner at Anderson Jones, PLLC, in Raleigh.

“I loved my time on the board. It gave me a great chance to come back, to get together with like-minded folks and help the students,” says Jones, a Durham native who served on the board for six years and chaired it for four. “I consider Gillings my place, always.”

Although Jones termed off the board in 2020, his service to Gillings will continue. “The School’s profile is better than ever, and so many professors are on the cutting edge of global issues,” he says. “I will support the School in as many ways as I can. It really has a special place in my heart.”

Fred Hargett

Chair of the Public Health Foundation Board

Serving on the Gillings School’s Public Health Foundation Board is a way for Fred Hargett, executive vice president and CFO of Novant Health in Winston-Salem, N.C., to stay connected to a place that helped prepare him for his career and inspired him to make a difference.

Before joining Novant, Hargett was Ernst & Young’s manager of health care consulting. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Public Health degree from Gillings and a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration and a Master of Accounting degree from UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School. Combining skills from both schools led him to a career in healthcare management. “Public health has been a passion of mine since I was an undergraduate. I wanted a career that made a difference in people’s lives,” says Hargett, who joined the board in 2016 and was elected chair in July 2020.

One of Hargett’s top priorities as chair is to bring in new members from different backgrounds and experiences. “We need to open our lens and identify talent from diverse backgrounds,” he says, “to ensure that we are hearing voices from everyone we represent.”

In addition to raising funds to help support faculty teaching and research efforts and student support, foundation board members provide fiduciary oversight to the assets of the Public Health Foundation. “Gillings is an inclusive, vibrant place where really smart students care about what’s going on,” he says. “They are engaging in real-world issues of public health and wanting to be part of developing the solutions. It gives me optimism.”

Celette Skinner

Public Health Foundation Board (Past Chair)

Celette Sugg Skinner, PhD, came to Gillings in 1987 with a master’s degree in communications and a background in marketing – and an aspiration to empower people with information that would help them improve their health and well-being.

An expert in health communication, health equity and health care delivery research, Skinner is Parkland Professor of Community Medicine, founding associate director for population science for the Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center, and inaugural chair of the Department of Population & Data Sciences at the University of Texas (UT) Southwestern Medical Center. She remains involved at Gillings through the Public Health Foundation board, recently finishing a term as board chair and continuing to serve as a member.

After graduating from Gillings in 1991 with a PhD in health behavior, Skinner broke ground as a pioneer in individual-level-tailored health communications research. Working primarily among underserved groups, she has developed and tested innovative behavior-change interventions for more than 30 years, with a focus on facilitating cancer screening. At UT Southwestern, Skinner has led growth in research in the Department of Population & Data Sciences, with a focus on generating discoveries that translate into improved clinical practice.

Before joining the Public Health Foundation board, Skinner maintained a connection to Gillings as a visiting course lecturer, dissertation committee member, and research collaborator.

“I have always been thankful for the training and inspiration I received at UNC,” she says, “and want to do what I can to help the School have the resources and recognition to stay at the top.”

Joanna Conley

Chair of the Alumni Association Advisory Board

A summer internship at Mission Hospital in Asheville, N.C. started Joanna Conley’s career in hospital administration, but her interest in health care as a profession began as a child.

“I knew I wanted to work in healthcare from the time I was a child and survived a significant illness,” says Conley, CEO at TriStar Southern Hills Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee. “I wanted to help others as I had been helped, but I wasn’t sure the best avenue to pursue.”

A California native, Conley came to Gillings to earn an undergraduate degree in health policy management. While at UNC, she took a summer internship at Mission – and after graduating, she continued to work there for several years in strategic planning before moving to Nashville to earn an MBA at Vanderbilt. Since then, she has held leadership roles in several hospitals before returning to Nashville to serve in her current role.

“I enjoy serving as a hospital CEO. I believe in fostering a culture of inclusion for our colleagues, physicians and patients while focusing on advancing patient care quality,” she says.

As chair of the Alumni Association Advisory Board and an ex officio member of the School’s Public Health Foundation Board, Conley enjoys the opportunity to give back, connect with other alumni and support students.

“Gillings is a wonderful institution that provides an education and experience that students reap the benefits from for the rest of their career through the relationships they foster, experiences that they gain and challenges they overcome,” she says.

Two grants totaling more than $900,000 will boost Gillings researchers’ efforts to address COVID-19 – one funding key lab equipment and another supporting a study of how genetic changes may affect risk of severe illness and death.

Researchers in the lab of Ralph Baric, PhD, William R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor of epidemiology at Gillings, are on the forefront of developing COVID-19 treatments. They aided in preclinical trials of the antiviral drug remdesivir, which speeds recovery from COVID-19.

A $433,000 grant from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a philanthropic organization founded by Priscilla Chan, MD, and Mark Zuckerberg, funded a new robotic arm for Baric’s lab that can pipette fluids much more quickly and accurately than humans can, along with a robot that detects active virus particles and an RNA-sequencing machine, which increase the rate of testing compounds by 20-fold and accelerate the development of effective treatments.

“This equipment will make it easier to do the experiments necessary to verify that the vaccines and therapeutics generated by others are efficacious and safe, and it will ultimately save hundreds of thousands of lives,” said Rachel Graham, PhD, assistant professor of epidemiology.

A $500,000 grant from Google.org supports a Gillings-Vanderbilt University study analyzing blood samples from a cohort originally established to study chronic diseases among Mexican-Americans in Texas. Some of the 4,000 cohort participants were infected by SARS-CoV-2, allowing researchers to use artificial intelligence to compare blood samples from before and after infection to look for gene expression changes that may be due to the virus.

“This study is unprecedented,” said principal investigator Kari North, PhD, Gillings professor of epidemiology. “The identification of changes in gene expression associated with COVID-19 infection and severity will contribute to global knowledge on the biology of SARS-CoV-2.”

Stuart & Karen Gansky

Stuart Gransky is professor and chair of oral epidemiology and associate dean for research at the University of California, San Francisco; 1996 DrPH graduate in biostatistics; Karen Gransky, MS, is a special education teacher in the San Mateo-Foster City School District

“We both are grateful for the opportunities we’ve been fortunate to have had, especially to attend Carolina – where we met – and to be involved in UNC campus and community activities. We want to ensure current and future Carolina students continue to have similar opportunities.”

Derrick Matthews, PhD

Assistant professor of health behavior. Research focus: LGBTQ health; the racial inequity in the US HIV/AIDS epidemic among sexual minority men

“The Hatch-Barnhill Scholarship is a great way to support efforts to create a more diverse student body in health behavior and a more inclusive department. In many ways, our students are already leading us; the extent to which I can support their training is one of the best ways I can advocate for health equity.”

Ned Brooks, DrPH

Retired professor of health policy management; 1985 DrPH graduate in maternal and child health

“One of the biggest lessons from 2020 is that high quality public health is essential to our well-being. The Gillings School is one of the very best in the country, so when I give to it, I know my gift will be well spent on crucially important teaching, research and service.”

Khadija Jahfiya, MSPH

Legislative fellow with the Senate Agriculture Committee; 1999 MSPH graduate; monthly donor to the Minority Health Conference and the Department of Health Policy Management

“I am very intentional about my giving – I want to make sure my money is supporting work I feel passionate about. People my age can make a difference – having been students, we can understand that it’s nice to have that support. Even if you just give a little bit, it goes a long way.”

Jason Zaks

Managing Director, Alex Brown Institutional Consulting in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The Laurel E. Zaks Master of Public Health Scholarship in Global Public Health Nutrition was created by Zaks’ family in her memory.

“My sister loved her time in graduate school and loved traveling and helping people. It’s been awesome to meet the scholarship recipients – they all share that same passion to help people. We are happy to be a small part of continuing the School’s great work and its impact felt around the world.”

Former Gillings staff member Rebecca Mabe earmarked her planned gift for the Michel A. Ibrahim Fellowship, which provides $10,000 annually to support graduate students across the School. Mabe was the School’s assistant dean for business and later became associate dean for administration.

“Public health means so much because of the work that all the different public health fields do, and because I worked in administration, I wasn’t wed to a particular department,” she says. “But graduate students were the ones I saw and worked with on a daily basis, and I want my gift to support students to be our future public health professionals.”

Steve (MS ’82, PhD ’83 Biostatistics) and Sylvia (MPH ’81 Biostatistics) Snapinn’s planned gift supports students in the biostatistics department, where they met. Through their estate, the Snapinns will support the Innovation in Biostatistics Premier Fellowship to cover tuition and related expenses and a stipend for living expenses for a biostatistics student in financial need.

“There are not many careers where you can apply your skills to developing new drugs to improve public health,” said Steve Snapinn, now a consultant at Seattle-Quilcene Biostatistics after retiring from Amgen, having worked in the pharmaceutical industry for more than three decades. “We wanted to give that opportunity to another student who might not have that opportunity to afford it otherwise.”

Retired public health microbiologist Sally Liska, who earned a master’s degree and a doctoral degree in the former Department of Parasitology and Laboratory Practice, is using retirement funds and a gift through her estate to create the Gillings Global Health scholarship, which will support international students or students interested in global health. Throughout her career, Liska traveled to roughly 20 African countries to help train public health and clinical lab workers.

“I was lucky enough to have attended UNC on a financially supported program, so I’m not just paying it back by funding a scholarship,” says Liska, whose career included directing public health labs in Orlando, San Francisco and San Jose. “When you come to that age where you have money coming available that you’ve got to use, why not think about giving it to your alma mater to further education?”

Planned gifts at Carolina

There are a multitude of ways to include Carolina in your gift planning — some of them may even surprise you!

• Cash
• Stocks & bonds
• IRA rollover
• Life insurance
• Real estate
• Business assets
• Annuity or trust
• Bequests
• Artwork, antiques, collectables & intellectual property

Please contact a member of the UNC Gillings Advancement team for more information about how to make a planned gift: [email.sph@unc.edu](mailto:email.sph@unc.edu?subject=Planned giving)

One of the University’s longest-serving and most accomplished deans, Barbara K. Rimer, DrPH, Alumni Distinguished Professor, strives to keep the Gillings School a world-class leader in public health. She mentors and encourages students, faculty and staff; creates an inclusive and collaborative environment within the School; and pushes to improve health equity and advance knowledge in the field of public health.

As the number of public health schools and programs continues to grow across the country, competition for the best and brightest students has become fiercer. That’s why Dean Rimer accelerated a previously planned estate gift (established in 2009) and made a $100,000 gift in support of The Irving and Joan Rimer Scholarship Endowment Fund. This fund — named in memory of her parents to recognize their lifelong commitment to health communication, social justice and equality of opportunity — supports Gillings graduate students seeking a degree in health behavior, with a focus on enhancing inclusive excellence at the School.

“The Gillings School is an incredible place, and our people are our greatest strength,” says Associate Dean for Advancement Karissa Grasty. “Our community demonstrates remarkable levels of commitment, inclusivity and excellence, and these values are a testament to our leadership. Dean Rimer’s professional contributions ensure that Gillings remains the top destination for deserving scholars seeking a public education in public health, and her personal contribution demonstrates her commitment to making Gillings more inclusive. She is amazingly generous and is often the first to support the greatest needs of the School.”

For five decades, the Minority Student Caucus has been an advocate for students of color and has promoted research and programs addressing critical issues of health equity. Since 1977, they have organized the Minority Health Conference, the longest running student-led health conference in the United States. Here’s to another 50 years of outstanding work.

1977: Students at the registration table during the first Minority Health Conference.

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1980s: Students attend a Minority Health Conference.

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1999: Bill Small, associate dean for students (middle), poses with Minority Student Caucus co-presidents LaMont Bryant (left) and Sonya Goode Green (right).

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2007-08: The late Bill Small and the Minority Student Caucus executive board

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2013: The 2013 Minority Health Conference planning committee

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2020: The 2020 Minority Student Caucus and Minority Health Conference leadership: Deanie Anyangwe, Ishani Patel, Hailey Mason and Rakiah Anderson smile together.

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2020: Minority Health Conference attendees had the opportunity to pose at a social media booth.

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2021: Members of the 2021 Minority Student Caucus gather at a local park.

"The stories address the now, the new and the next — where we are, especially in emerging fields like artificial intelligence and machine learning, and where we are going (for example, individualizing weight-loss strategies). It takes many minds, often from very different backgrounds, with complementary skills and training, to understand problems and find effective, sustainable solutions. At UNC, collaboration is in the soul of the place, and our faculty, staff and students benefit every day from being in such a rich milieu.

Research done in schools of public health matters. Sometimes it’s a matter of life and death, for example, when epidemics threaten populations (think Ebola) or when opioid use increases in communities. Gillings researchers are driven to get results to people who will benefit. Many of the problems we face in public health are huge, potentially daunting and heretofore unsolved. Our faculty members and students seek to disentangle the apparently disconnected and discordant threads of evidence to create a coherent story that can be turned into interventions, methods and tools for improved public health.

The lives of people and the planet are affected by what we do in our school. It’s personal. Someone’s son or daughter may be the college student who dies from alcohol poisoning. Someone’s father, mother, sibling or child may be the victim of an opioid overdose. They are people in our communities. They are us. The losses of opioid misuse, for example, are human, economic, community and societal. The work of faculty members and students in war-torn countries reminds us of the need to adapt strategies to context. As the fall semester began, Hurricane Dorian battered the Bahamas and our own Ocracoke Island, a brutal hammer shattering lives, livelihoods and communities. Climate change will cause more of these horrific events. We must devote more of our research, practice and training to building resilience in the face of disasters.

Data are fundamental to public health solutions, and we have some of the strongest faculty anywhere when it comes to data. They are in biostatistics and in every department. They are experts in using large data sets to find patterns that lead to answers. Real-world evidence may sound folksy, but it takes a lot of data to find credible answers to important questions, such as how medications perform in the real world. We’re on the leading edge of research and teaching in artificial intelligence and machine learning. These are the tools of the now and the future, and our students must acquire them to be effective.

“At Gillings, we are challenged every day to improve the world, and we’re on it!”

Among the new is Aaron Salzberg, PhD, the Don and Jennifer Holzworth Distinguished Professor of environmental sciences and engineering, and director of The Water Institute at UNC. He came from the U.S. Department of State, where he led water initiatives and served under five different secretaries of state. He is building upon Jamie Bartram’s excellent work but also taking The Water Institute in new directions, including water diplomacy. Water, one of the building blocks of life, essential for survival, is under threat all over the world and here at home. We are determined to do something about it. At Gillings, we are challenged every day to improve the world, and we’re on it!

Thanks for your support,

Barbara K. Rimer, DrPH

I am pleased to serve as the Guest Editor of Carolina Public Health on precision health featuring the breadth and depth of Gillings research that ranges from molecules to societies, from prevention to treatment, and across North Carolina and around the world.

Our faculty are tackling the world’s biggest public health challenges of our day. Gillings faculty are true innovators who are forging new paths to create novel science in an effort to improve lives of people all over the world.

What is precision health? We define precision health as personalized prevention and treatment strategies tailored to each individual’s own biological, social and environmental characteristics and targeted to each community’s own resources, conditions and needs. The examples in this issue of Carolina Public Health showcase the breadth of precision health research at Gillings.

While precision health has garnered much recent attention, most of this attention has focused on treatment. Yet if we are to truly impact population health, then precision health must also focus on prevention. Gillings faculty have long used tailored approaches to address health problems, drawing attention to population context and individual differences in responses to interventions. Our strength in implementation science has guided our use of innovative methods to most efficiently and effectively incorporate evidence-based practices and policies into efforts to improve population health.

Translation is key — Gillings faculty turn observations from the laboratory, clinic and community into interventions and policies that improve the health of individuals and the public. This is achieved through collaborative team science that brings experts from different fields together to learn from each other and to generate the best methodological and statistical approaches that simultaneously address biological, social and environmental factors to solve pressing and complex public health problems. This is where the magic happens: Bringing experts together to talk science and share substantive and methodological expertise can lead to impressive discoveries and breakthroughs.

Unfortunately, much of the previous work in precision health has focused on narrow segments of the world’s population. Gillings researchers seek to overcome this major limitation by collecting data in diverse populations and across a range of social and economic conditions across the world. Attention to diversity and inclusion is imperative: Without it, there is danger that findings may reinforce social, health, educational and economic inequities. That’s why Gillings researchers have been working tirelessly to generate new knowledge that represents diversity in social, economic, and geographic perspectives. This is a hallmark of our work as the Gillings School of Global Public Health.

I arrived at Gillings more than two decades ago as a postdoctoral fellow. I marveled at its collegiality and how many doors were open across the school, enabling conversations among basic scientists, behavioral interventionists, policy researchers, biostatisticians and epidemiologists. That deeply engaging and collaborative environment continues today — and it fosters amazing opportunities to come together to solve the world’s greatest problems.