UNC News Release
For immediate release: Monday, September 24, 2007
UNC School of Public Health awarded $1.5 million for Public Health Leadership Institute
CHAPEL HILL –The North Carolina Institute for Public Health, the service and outreach arm of the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was awarded a three-year, $1.5 million grant by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to direct the national Public Health Leadership Institute (PHLI) on Sept.19, 2007.
PHLI has trained over 800 of the nation's top public health leaders since it was created in 1991 and has been a major force in transforming the nation's public health system.
PHLI will be directed by Dr. Edward Baker, director of the North Carolina Institute for Public Health and research professor of health policy and administration in the School of Public Health. Program leadership will be shared with Carol Woltring, executive director, Center for Health Leadership and Practice, Public Health Institute, Oakland, Calif., and David G. Altman, Ph.D., senior vice-president of research and innovation, Center for Creative Leadership, Greensboro, N.C.
Other partners in distance learning and project sponsorship include the Public Health Leadership Society, the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, the National Association of City and County Officials, and the American Public Health Association.
PHLI program design will derive from successful experiences at UNC, which has directed the program since 2001, and at Public Health Institute of Oakland, where the program was located from 1991-2000. According to Baker, "our collaborative design combines the best of the last 17 years with new innovations in leadership development, such as action learning and web technology."
"Action learning," a process of learning by working with a coach on real-world team projects, is an effective way to leverage the experience of adult learners, motivate them and increase training transfer to the workplace.
For each year of the three-year project period, PHLI will provide state-of-the-art leadership development opportunities for 50 carefully selected, high-level public health leaders from across the nation. Using action learning, the program also will advance national public health priorities through team projects sponsored by national public health organizations.
"For decades, UNC School of Public Health has been a major training ground for public health leaders, and we are committed to building upon that record,” said School of Public Health dean, Barbara K. Rimer. “The continuation of our role in directing the Public Health Leadership Institute further affirms our commitment to providing the highest quality leadership development opportunities through an extensive array of executive education and degree-granting programs."