Global Public Health

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The School’s Office of Global
Health, directed by associate
dean Margaret E. (Peggy)
Bentley, PhD
, organizes and
oversees the School’s global
efforts. Bentley is professor
of nutrition and associate
director of the UNC Institute
for Global Health and
Infectious Diseases.

School of Public Health faculty members have a long history of international research, practice and teaching, beginning in the 1930s.

Many, including Dr. Dan Okun and Dr. H.G. Baity, who was the nation’s first doctoral graduate in sanitary engineering (Harvard, 1928), were experts on water and sanitation issues.

In the 1940s and ‘50s, funding from federal and international agencies allowed School researchers, in Dr. Lucy Morgan’s words, “to widen the circle” of understanding and improve the health of all the world’s peoples. From the American southwest to Peru, from South Africa to the rural southern U.S., the basic health needs of individuals and communities were more similar than not.

Today, more than 50 faculty and staff work in more than 45 countries, conducting research in nutrition and obesity; maternal and child health and family planning; treatment and prevention of HIV/ AIDS, malaria and TB; water sanitation; health care policy and health disparities; and injury prevention and domestic violence, among many other topics.

Visit the Gillings Global Gateway to learn more.

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Last modified: 01/19/21