Earp returns as chair of Department of Health Behavior and Health Education

Dr. Jo Anne Earp

Jo Anne Earp, ScD, has been appointed chair of the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health’s Department of Health Behavior and Health Education, effective Sept. 1. The selection follows an extensive search by a committee led by Dianne Ward, EdD, professor of nutrition at the School.

Earp was chair of the department from 1996 to 2005 and has served as interim chair since 2008, when Edwin Fisher, PhD, left the position to become global director of Peers for Progress, a diabetes peer-support program.

Commenting on the severe economic restraints experienced by the University over the last year, Earp praised the health behavior and health education faculty for its commitment to excellence in scholarship and in the classroom while working with a “bare-bones staff” to create a fiscally efficient department.

“Taken together,” she said, “our collective efforts have helped to protect and extend our excellence as one of the top-ranked departments of health behavior and health education in a school of public health in the U.S. I am honored to continue leading and supporting this admirable group of faculty and staff.”

Earp received her Doctor of Sciences in behavioral sciences from Johns Hopkins University in 1974. She has been a faculty member at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health since 1975 and achieved the rank of professor in 1992.

Since 1976, she has been a member of the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, The Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research and The UNC Highway Safety Research Center.

Earp regularly teaches graduate courses in research methods, professional development (including writing for publication), women’s health and patient advocacy. Her book, Patient Advocacy for Health Care Quality: Strategies for Achieving Patient-Centered Care, co-authored with Elizabeth French and Melissa Gilkey, was published by Jones & Bartlett in 2007.

Beloved by students, she has won a number of teaching awards, most recently the UNC Women’s Leadership Council’s Mentoring Award (2008) and the public health school’s John E. Larsh Jr. Award for Mentorship (2005).

Earp’s “wide-ranging experiences in service, research and teaching, her wisdom about graduate education, her understanding of the department, her knowledge about how UNC and the School work, and her abiding commitment to HBHE’s mission and its people, including our alumni” will be of special value in these trying financial times, said Barbara K. Rimer, DrPH, dean of the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health and Alumni Distinguished Professor in the department.

UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health contact: Ramona DuBose, director of communications, (919) 966-7467 or ramona_dubose@unc.edu.