 From local to global, our mission is to improve public health, promote individual well-being, and eliminate health disparities across North Carolina and around the world. Barbara K. Rimer: School's commitment transcends borders
The UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health is more committed to North Carolina than ever. In every department of the School and especially in the North Carolina Institute for Public Health, we reach out to every one of North Carolina's 100 counties. We anticipate public health problems that threaten the well-being of people everywhere and accelerate solutions to those problems across North Carolina and around the world.
Since the beginning of the School in 1940, our faculty, staff and students have traveled across North Carolina and all over the world. In the early 1950s, faculty members journeyed to countries like Iran, Nepal, Egypt, Africa and India. Today, we are in more than 50 countries.
The global economic crisis has shown us emphatically how interconnected we are - from Beijing to Abu Dhabi to Elizabeth City, N.C. We now know that what happens in US banking reverberates around the world.
Global in our name signifies the public health interconnections of local and global. Many public health threats, such as infectious diseases and pandemics, obesity, global warming and air pollution transcend borders. If we understand the causes of obesity in North Carolina's children and create effective interventions, then other states and countries can use that knowledge.
As our state's former health director Leah Devlin said, "We are all global citizens." Being global makes us no less local!
In her recent blog (Day 16) which highlights UNC faculty research in Malawi, Rose Hoban, WUNC reporter, pointed to several reasons why people in North Carolina benefit from work our faculty, staff and students do around the world. I have paraphrased and expanded her words.
- Our researchers are working on diseases and conditions, like malaria, HIV, tuberculosis, and obesity that threaten the world. The solutions they find can be used anywhere. Strategies to reduce mother-to-child transmission of AIDS, pioneered in Malawi, may be applicable to North Carolina and the District of Columbia.
- An all too unpleasant 21st century reality is that today's epidemic in Southeast Asia could become tomorrow's epidemic in North Carolina. When people travel, so do germs and diseases. Like it or not, we are all connected. It is in our best interest to fight diseases wherever they occur.
- When our faculty members receive research grants to conduct research around the world, 30%-40% of the funds remain in North Carolina--another way in which local and global are interconnected and North Carolinians benefit.
- Improving public health everywhere is good public policy and foreign policy. It makes the world safer and more stable. It makes us safer.
Please explore the many ways we connect with our state and our world:
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