H1N1 flu outbreak response, public health preparedness projects receive grants

The center, based at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Gillings School of Global Public Health, has awarded the grants to four UNC faculty and one doctoral scholar from the University of Illinois at Chicago. The grants aim to engage new researchers from diverse disciplines in innovative studies of public health preparedness and response systems.

Dr. Ed Baker

“We are pleased to offer funding now, while we are in the midst of the response to the current H1N1 influenza outbreak, to support innovative approaches to tackling this critical problem,” said Edward L. Baker, MD, the center’s principal investigator and director of the North Carolina Institute for Public Health.

“The new projects complement and extend the methods and disciplines currently being used to conduct the center’s research.”

The recipients of the center’s 2009 Mini-Grants of up to $20,000 are:

• Noel P. Greis, PhD, director of the Center for Logistics and Digital Strategy at theUNC Kenan-Flagler Business School, whose study is titled “A systems approach to North Carolina public health preparedness: Social networks and information models”;
• Javad Mostafa, PhD, Frances Carroll McColl Term Associate Professor in the UNC School of Information and Library Science, whose study is titled “Public Health Informatics Pilot Study”;
• Stephanie W. Haas, PhD, professor in the UNC School of Information and Library Science, whose study is titled “Modeling communication links among public health emergency preparedness officials in North Carolina using social network analysis: A pilot study”; and
• 

  Dr. Jim Thomas

  James C. Thomas, PhD, associate professor of epidemiology and director of the program in public health ethics at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, whose study is titled “State pandemic influenza ethics preparedness.”

Haas’ and Thomas’ projects specifically address issues related to the H1N1 outbreak.

A New Investigator Award of $12,000 was granted to Eric Gebbie, a doctoral scholar from the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health. His study is titled “Initial review of applicability of international humanitarian emergency standards to displaced population care in the United States.”

Grant funding comes from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which established the North Carolina Preparedness and Emergency Response Research Center last year as one of seven such centers around the country.

For more information, visit the center’s website.

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