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Translating Science into Practice: Doing great public health research means putting study results to work. Whether examining molecular-level data or facilitating large-scale organizational changes, we’re Gillings. We’re on it! Gillings faculty go beyond the literature and the lab to make real changes in health-care practice and policies — and real differences for patients.

Melissa Troester, PhD, professor of epidemiology and research professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, is the principal investigator on the Carolina Breast Cancer Study (CBCS), a study of breast cancer epidemiology and biology launched more than a quarter-century ago to understand why African-American women disproportionately die from breast cancer.

Since 1993, the study has gathered data on more than 8,000 women from 44 counties in North Carolina. Now in Phase 3 of the study, researchers are conducting a more detailed analysis on how people are interfacing with the health-care system — for example, what kind of therapy they receive and when and whether they have comorbidities, like diabetes or heart disease — and integrating that information with molecular data.

“CBCS has a long history of interdisciplinary science and national and international collaboration,” says Andy Olshan, PhD, Barbara S. Hulka Distinguished Professor of epidemiology at Gillings and CBCS co-principal investigator. “For example, CBCS is collaborating with the National Cancer Institute and an international consortium to explore the genetics of breast cancer. CBCS has also partnered with two other studies to form the world’s largest consortium to study the epidemiology of breast cancer among African-Americans.”

The CBCS seeks to integrate advances in molecular genomics with population-based research. In particular, one recent advance — a National Cancer Institute initiative called The Cancer Genome Atlas project — has led to a clearer picture of tumor genetic variability. “This data is typically not available in large population-based studies and the CBCS seeks to help close this gap,” Troester says.

“We’ve learned that what happens clinically is determined by tumor biology,” she says, “and as public health researchers we want to integrate this information with how people use and access health care.”

Working in collaborative teams across disciplines, Troester and her colleagues use several different methods and technologies to strengthen their understanding of cancer tumors. One area of focus is examining pathology data with “deep learning” — having computers use algorithms to look for unique features of tumor tissues that could help predict how the tumor might progress. Machine learning could identify features that scientists have missed so far, and may be able to standardize assessment of the tumors. For some features, like specific markers indicating tumor aggressiveness, pathologists may agree only 80 percent of the time on whether the tumor is high grade.

Transfer learning is another machine-learning approach that researchers hope to use to predict cancer progression risk so that doctors can select the best treatments and detect recurrence earlier and more rapidly so fewer people experience the worst cancer outcomes. Based on huge databases of images, computers can detect differences between different kinds of animals or objects (dogs and cats, or tables and chairs). Hoping to apply models trained initially on this kind of “computer vision” to tumor tissues, Troester and her collaborators — Marc Niethammer, PhD, professor of computer science; James Stephen Marron, PhD, the Amos Hawley Distinguished Professor of statistics and operations research; and Charles Perou, the May Goldman Shaw Distinguished Professor of molecular oncology — are feeding various images of different types of cancers into a machine learning algorithm.

The scientists aim to use machine learning to find image features that link to genetics to distinguish among different types of cancers, and use these images to predict survival by linking molecular data with the actual outcomes. Building models that have both molecular biomarker data and image data from the tumors might do a better job of predicting risk than models that use only one of these data types.

Microscopic images of tumors taken for biopsies have long been used to predict outcomes, using features like tumor grade or cellular differentiation. “Our hope with this project is that we can learn new image features if we ask computers to distinguish between tumors that are aggressive and those that are not,” Troester says.

Deep learning also has the potential to integrate two different key types of data on breast cancer — mammograms and biopsy histology images, essentially two different photos of cancer, to help distinguish between aggressive and benign tumors, enabling doctors to better assess risk and supporting precision health both for prevention and treatment.

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“We can bring together nationally renowned experts in their fields, and we are really lucky in terms of the depth of collaborators we have here at Carolina.”

Melissa Troester, PhD

Professor of Epidemiology and Research

Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine

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One million women a year have biopsies. For most of them, results come back as benign, but there is a limit to how much additional information they get back. “We think we can do better and that patients deserve to have better information, especially after a biopsy that’s a relatively invasive procedure,” Troester says. “Extending what we’ve learned about tumors could have benefits on the prevention side as well as the treatment side.”

The CBCS is pursuing many different research directions and takes advantage of advances in a lot of areas — computer science, molecular profiling, social determinants, and health services — so it relies critically on working with investigators across disciplines and across multiple schools within UNC. Troester says, “We can bring together nationally renowned experts in their fields, and we are really lucky in terms of the depth of collaborators we have here at Carolina.”

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.

The Wootens hope recruitment funds they provided to support a new faculty member at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health will raise awareness about the harmful effects of alcohol abuse.

An expert in regulating alcohol sales and distribution, Pamela Trangenstein, PhD, assistant professor of health behavior, joined Gillings in August. She studies structural determinants of alcohol use, focusing on high-risk settings like college campuses.

“I want to find out how we can move the needle on policies that prevent high-risk drinking and protect vulnerable populations,” Trangenstein says, noting alcohol’s links to injuries, hospital visits, car crashes, violent crime, sexual assaults, vandalism, public intoxication and infectious disease. “Alcohol is one of the leading causes of death but there are very few people studying it, so there are many opportunities to make a difference.”

Trangenstein is conducting a national survey on college alcohol policies and plans to evaluate whether a new state law allowing alcohol sales on campus during college sports games has any public health ramifications.

“We were honored to provide recruitment funds to help bring Dr. Trangenstein to UNC for alcohol education and to further the communication about the detriment of alcohol abuse,” says Ann Wooten, who as a sorority trustee has become deeply concerned about excessive alcohol use.

“We know the Gillings School of Global Public Health is a leader in the world,” Ron Wooten says, “and we hope the focus it can put on alcohol misuse and the problems it creates will combat the misinformed encouragement of alcohol use.”

“I want to find out how we can move the needle on policies that prevent high-risk drinking and protect vulnerable populations.”

Pamela Trangenstein, PhD

Assistant Professor of Health Behavior

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.”

To help provide more healthy meals for children across the state, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina (Blue Cross NC) will provide $500,000 over three years to No Kid Hungry North Carolina, a public-private coalition housed at the UNC Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention that leverages the many strengths of the UNC Gillings School’s Department of Nutrition.

“We have long understood the important role of nutritious food to sustain a healthy life,” says Alice Ammerman, DrPH, director of the Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention and Mildred Kaufman Distinguished Professor of Nutrition at Gillings. “This is particularly true for children and adolescents. It is crucial to support those who depend on federally funded meals served at school and in the community in order to thrive.”

Gillings doctoral nutrition student Jessica Soldavini, MPH, RD, LDN, is No Kid Hungry NC’s graduate research assistant. She leads evaluation and data analysis projects, created the organization’s afterschool nutrition and cooking programs, and supervises a large team of volunteers and interns — many of whom are also Gillings students.

“Working with No Kid Hungry fits all my academic interests, which has enriched my experience at Gillings,” says Soldavini, who received the 2019 Rise Against Hunger World Hunger Leadership Award for her work. “And I’ve applied the research and evaluation skills I’ve learned at Gillings to my work with No Kid Hungry. The opportunity to work directly in the field both on the research and programmatic side has really been valuable.”

Over the next three school years, Blue Cross NC’s partnership with the No Kid Hungry NC team will support innovative steps to increase participation in existing child nutrition programs and startup expenses to begin new ones.

“Blue Cross NC is committed to tackling childhood hunger in our state,” says Cheryl Parquet, Blue Cross NC director of community and diversity engagement. “Every child should have access to nutritious food, and we’re proud to support the school systems and community organizations that are on the front lines of the fight against food insecurity.”

Through a new scholarship endowment they created in the Department of Health Policy and Management, they hope to provide future Gillings students, especially women and minorities, with the support to pursue similar opportunities in health-care leadership.

“We were impressed by the Department’s inclusiveness and commitment to improving diversity and the health of vulnerable populations locally and globally,” said Jess Melton, BSBIO ’04, MHA ’07, CERT ’07.

Attending a conference, Jess learned about a study finding that as leadership levels of health-care administration increased, the diversity of those in leadership dropped sharply. Another study found that increasing “diversity in leadership and governance” could significantly improve health-care equity. These studies helped inspire the endowment’s goal of advancing leadership opportunities for women and minorities.

It was this type of support that helped both Jess and Doug as undergraduates. They participated in the Research Education Support program, funded largely by the National Institute of Health and the National Science Foundation to support minority students working toward degrees in STEM-related fields.

The RES program first exposed Doug, (BA ’04, PhD ’10) to public health as an academic and career possibility. “Had I not been in that program, I would not be working in corporate health analytics,” he says. “We worked full-time so we got paid to learn about science, and we had a lot of support and encouragement. We are doing this now because someone did it for us.”

As part of RES, Jess did field work in eastern North Carolina with the late Dr. Steven Bennett Wing, associate professor of epidemiology. Then, her first day of graduate school, Hurricane Katrina hit.

“It almost spoke to me: ‘You love health care and you love planning and anticipating the health-care needs of vulnerable populations.’ I knew health-care administration was the career for me,” she says.

The couple — parents to 5-year-old twins — named their endowment the Melton Family Scholarship Endowment to honor Doug’s father, the late Dr. Larry Douglas Melton, who dedicated substantial time and resources to promoting educational and professional development opportunities for minorities throughout North Carolina.

“We wanted to do something substantial to give back and further our commitment to improving health care,” Jess says, “and create a lasting legacy for our family.”

“It’s a major problem worldwide, including in advanced countries like the United States. Water is not present in unlimited quantities,” Ahuja says. “Fresh water availability is much smaller, and we continuously pollute it in various ways.”

Ahuja’s interest in water began about 50 years ago during a United Nations aid trip to Senegal with Novartis. Since then, Ahuja has organized an American Chemical Society fact-finding mission and workshop to address arsenic contamination of water in Bangladesh; presented papers on water in Bangladesh, Europe and the United States; contributed to water symposia and conferences; and written 10 books on the subject.

Crediting his long-ago travel for sparking his own interest in water, last year Ahuja funded travel for a student practicum through The Water Institute to enable a student to gain international field experience and address water, sanitation and hygiene (WaSH) issues in a developing country.

Nicole Behnke, MSPH 2019, environmental sciences and engineering, received Ahuja’s funding and traveled to Amman, Jordan, for her global practicum during the summer of 2018. She interned with World Vision International (WVI) and focused on WaSH issues related to Syrian children and families at the Azraq refugee camp, and worked on her thesis on WaSH and environmental health services for displaced populations.

“One great side effect of doing qualitative research is that you get all the insight you need to answer your research questions, but you also just learn a lot about the field itself,” Behnke says.

Behnke has presented her results at the Water and Health Conference, submitted her work to the International Journal of Hygiene and Environmental Health, and finished her thesis. She was chosen as one of 106 students nationwide to receive a David L. Boren Fellowship for 2019, which will fund her study of Modern Standard Arabic at the Qasid Arabic Institute in Amman.

Why did you choose to work with Chatham Hospital?

I have always felt strongly about giving back to the community that has been my home in my academic and professional career, so I really wanted to do a local practicum that feeds back into this part of North Carolina. I also have a spot in my heart for rural communities. After college, I was a nonprofit domestic violence counselor covering three rural counties along the U.S.-Mexico border. It helped me realize how rural areas are so often forgotten. Getting in on this project early to help influence the decision-making process was also very attractive.

What kind of projects did you do to help support those decisions?

I did a comprehensive literature review of maternity care in the United States and Canada, which both have issues with rural maternity care and closures of rural hospitals and birth facilities. Since decisions were still being made about goals and staffing models, I thought that if we could anticipate what challenges might occur, we could get ahead of them and make informed decisions or have contingency plans. My biggest takeaway was that the workforce makes or breaks women’s experiences in these facilities. Family physicians and nurses in rural hospitals are overworked. They are understaffed and are rarely off call, and they can’t pursue continuing education. There is lot of burnout and feelings of being pulled in different directions.

I proposed baseline employee interviews about anticipated challenges and strengths, how they would feel best supported in this work environment, what their continuing education needs are, and so on. The interviews could help us develop an employee wellness and education training plan. The idea is that having a healthy, competent, trained and educated workforce would help with employee retention and also, hopefully, have trickle-down effects that are good for patients and outcomes.

To evaluate the services once they’re available, I made a “wish list” of maternal and child health indicators so we can see if the new facility moves the needle on any of these measures.

What did it mean to be the recipient of the Siegel Student Support Award?

It made a huge difference. This project was not a paid role and I needed to have some source of income over the summer, but I was really dedicated to and attracted to this project. I was very fortunate to be selected and so grateful for the opportunity.

“My parents were Holocaust survivors who came here with nothing,” says Weinberger, chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management and Vergil N. Slee Distinguished Professor of Healthcare Quality Management, “but despite their long work hours at the luncheonette, they always found time and ways to give back.”

After his parents died, Weinberger and his wife, Jane, talked with their daughters about establishing a fund at the Gillings School to honor the memory of their grandparents, Francine and Harry.

“Our parents taught my wife and me about social justice when we were very young,” Weinberger says, “and our own family has been involved with social action causes, such as homelessness and hunger, since our daughters were young. We decided to establish annual awards at the bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral levels to recognize health policy and management students who are active in social justice issues or with organizations that support the values of an inclusive society. Not for a second have I doubted that was the right thing to do.”

The inaugural Francine and Harry Weinberger Awards for Excellence were presented in Spring 2018 to four Gillings students: Hiwot Ekuban and Samantha Farley (BSPH), Lauren Jordan (MPH), and Alecia Slade-Clary (PhD).

“In our school of public health, there is so much passion and commitment to social justice,” Weinberger says, “and the awards committee was faced with the difficult task of selecting the winners. I had taught each of the students at some point and knew the depth of their dedication, leadership and their great potential for future impact.”

For Weinberger, building an ever-widening student and alumni network is also key to nurturing successful careers.

“Relationships continue long after graduation,” he says. “I hear from former students regularly, and they hear from me. I like to make connections and use the network, and our alumni are eager to pay it forward.”

Weinberger feels fortunate to have worked on some interesting research projects over the years, but to him, mentoring and teaching are the most meaningful.

“That is why I’m still in the classroom,” he says, “and will be until I retire.”