Public Health Leadership and Practice

PHLP News

Building community for veterans through art

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November 26, 2024 North Carolina’s Alamance County is building a healthier community for veterans through art.

Veteran-friendly community project wins funding for next stage

Gillings MPH students honored with 2024 Impact in Practice Awards

UNC Asheville - UNC Gillings MPH program to graduate first class

Gillings School honors 5 faculty members for teaching innovation

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About Us

The Gillings School's Department of Public Health Leadership and Practice (PHLP) is home to Master of Public Health concentrations in Leadership in Practice, Population Health for Clinicians and Place-Based Health. We also co-lead the Global Health concentration and graduate-level online certificates. We work to prepare public health practitioners for leadership positions by developing population-level knowledge and skills with an interdisciplinary emphasis. Building upon their varied professional experience, students collaboratively learn to assess community health needs, develop innovative policies and programs and ensure that new systems are maintained and improved.

Vision: The Department of Public Health Leadership and Practice (PHLP) is a dynamic hub where public health leaders think holistically and act collaboratively to address complex challenges and promote innovative practice to improve health outcomes, systems, structures, and processes. Mission: Our mission is to equip future and current public health leaders with the technical and strategic skills essential to driving transformational change in population and community health. We Value:

Public health as a public service
Health for all (and we mean ALL)
Practice-driven research with collaborative partners
Leading with transparency, courage, honesty, humility and compassion
Learning through curiosity, risk-taking, flexibility, and change

Our Assets:

A multidisciplinary team with exceptional teaching, practice, and research experience
Expertise in collaborative work, where everyone is welcomed, respected and valued
A community of practice with connections across professions, sectors, and settings
A committed faculty and professional staff who engage with passion and compassion
A culture of innovation, trial-and-error, and continuous improvement

Message from the Chair

Vaughn Mamlin Upshaw, DrPH, EdD

We offer a customized curriculum to meet the demands of busy practitioners in public health and medical care. We offer courses delivered through a combination of traditional classroom, online and hybrid formats, bolstered by practical, hands-on experience. In doing so, we create leaders who share command of the latest technology and the most current public health approaches, who are adept at learning from their experiences and who utilize these skills to create new opportunities for improvement.

Department Leadership

Below you can find the new leadership team for PHLP’s academic programs

Associate Chairs:
Associate Chair for Academics—Lori Evarts
Associate Chair for Strategy and Innovation—Amy Joy Lanou

Associate Chair for Research and Scholarship—TBA

Masters of Public Health (MPH) Graduate Degrees:

Leadership in Practice — Lead Aimee McHale
Population Health for Clinicians — Co-Leads Minzhi Xing and Cindy Feltner
Place-Based Health — Lead Sarah Thach

Global Health —Co-Lead Marie Lina Excellent

Doctoral program in Public Health Executive Leadership (DrPH):
Public Health Executive Leadership — Co-Leads Oscar Fleming and John Wiesman

Graduate Certificates:

Graduate Certificate Director— Rhonda Stephens
Core Concepts in Public Health — Zunaid Ahsan
Field Epidemiology — Lorraine Alexander (Epid)
Global Health — Laura Villa-Torres
Public Health Leadership — Karl Johnson

Our Faculty

The faculty of the Department of Public Health Leadership and Practice is a diverse group of educators, with experience in both professional and academic environments. The core faculty collaborates with professors from the Schools of Medicine and the Gillings School to produce a curriculum built around principles of leadership and public health best practices.

Visit our faculty and staff page.

Our History

The Department of Public Health Leadership and Practice (PHLP) is an interdisciplinary program that has been described as "a department without walls." PHLP was founded in 1997 as an interdisciplinary academic program at the Gillings School. Growing out of a schoolwide initiative called the Interdisciplinary Curriculum in Practice and Leadership, PHLP was designed to provide public health professionals with leadership education to meet the challenges inherent in assuring and improving population health.

Chichi Zhu

Chichi talks about their practicum experience with focused on nonhormonal gender affirming practices engaged with by transgender and gender diverse adults.

Rhonda Stephens DDS, MPH

Dr. Rhonda Stephens was born and raised in Indiana and received her dental degree from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. She is a board certified dental public health specialist with 20 years of clinical and administrative experience at the local and state level.

Anabeel Sen, MPH

Anabeel Sen (Virginia Commonwealth University P.h.D. Candidate ‘27, UNC MPH ’23) is a physician, epidemiologist, and public health professional from Dhaka, Bangladesh- a city the size of St. Louis with more than 10 million residents.

Incoming Student Funding

Graduate students in the Department of Public Health Leadership and Practice are eligible for a variety of funding opportunities. A listing of available funding and awards sponsored by the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and other resources is maintained by the School’s Office of Student Affairs.

David Steffen and Jill Kerr Family Scholarship

This scholarship supports students within the Department of Public Health Leadership and Practice who demonstrate a commitment to improving public health practice.

Rachel Stevens Scholarship for Public Health Leadership

This scholarship is available for incoming and currently enrolled graduate students in the Department of Public Health Leadership and Practice who are committed to leadership in the field of public health practice.

Additional Awards and Student Funding

Change agents wanted

Apply Now

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Support Us

Individuals interested in helping provide financial support for the following awards may do so online at the Gillings School of Global Public Health Donate Now page by selecting the Department of Public Health Leadership and Practice.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Contact Public Health Leadership

135 Dauer Drive
4104 McGavran-Greenberg Hall, CB #7469
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7469
(919) 966-5285