DrPH student recognized by Graduate Education Advancement Board
Dorothy Cilenti, 2nd year DrPH student in Health Policy and Management, has been recognized with an Honorable Mention for the 2009 Graduate Education Advancement Board (GEAB) Impact Award. This award recognized outstanding graduate student research of particular benefit to North Carolina.
Cilenti, former health director for Alamance County, intends through her health systems research to examine the effects of public health agency accreditation on health department performance in North Carolina. Specifically, she will evaluate whether agencies that achieve accreditation status show improvements in public health performance and health outcomes in their communities, and she will tease out factors contributing to these improvements. The product of her research will be a tested tool and process for evaluating and comparing the effectiveness of local health departments that have attained accreditation status compared with those that have not. The team involved in Cilenti’s research includes Dr. Ed Baker, director of the North Carolina Institute of Public Health and former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Public Health Practice Office, Suzanne Havala Hobbs, DrPH, MS, RD, FADA, clinical associate professor and director of the Doctoral Program in Health Leadership at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill’s Gillings School of Global Public Health, as well as Bernard Turnock, MD, MPH, a prominent public health scholar at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Cilenti’s work will contribute directly to an understanding of the demands on and capacity of local health departments in North Carolina to respond to urgent public health challenges in our state so that gaps can be identified and addressed. The work will have national application and impact as well. |
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