History
The School was organized in 1936 as a division within the School of Medicine at the University of North Carolina. Separate status as a school of public health was granted in 1939, making the school the first school of public health established within a state university. The school awarded its first graduate degrees in 1940.
In 1949, UNC added the schools of Dentistry and Nursing with the schools of Public Health, Medicine and Pharmacy to formally organize the University's Division of Health Affairs. Thus, the School of Public Health became one of the few schools of public health in the nation to be co-located with four other health-profession schools on one campus.
Through the years, the School has grown into a collection of seven different departments and a Public Health Leadership Program. The departments of Epidemiology, Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Health Policy and Administration (now Health Policy and Management), and Public Health Nursing (now the Public Health Leadership Program) existed when the school was founded. The department of Health Behavior and Health Education was added in 1942, Nutrition in 1946, Biostatistics in 1949, and Maternal and Child Health in 1950.
The School received a pledge of $50 million in 2007 from Dennis Gillings and Joan Gillings to fund
- Innovation Laboratories to focus concentrated, interdisciplinary efforts on solving public health problems
- Visiting professorships and executives in residence to facilitate leadership development for faculty and for leaders from other institutions
- Student support to develop the next generation of public health experts
- Strategic investments such as the Water Institute at UNC
The Gillings School of Global Public Health continues to award doctoral, master's and undergraduate degrees and certificates to students who take courses on campus in Chapel Hill or via the Internet as distance learners.
Read more about this topic: University Of North Carolina At Chapel Hill School Of Public Health
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