Health network receives funding from Golden LEAF Foundation
| October 14, 2009 | |
| The UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health’s North Carolina Institute for Public Health has received a $100,000 grant from the Golden Leaf Foundation to support the administrative activities of the N.C. Telehealth Network (NCTN) project.
NCTN hopes to establish a dedicated high-speed, highly reliable broadband network that will interconnect North Carolina’s health care providers, including health departments and free clinics (phase I), public nonprofit hospitals (phase II), and private healthcare providers (phase III). The current funding will be used to assess and qualify public nonprofit hospitals to receive $6.1 million from an earlier award by the Federal Communications Commission. The funds will cover 85 percent of the hospitals’ network connections and services. The Southern Piedmont Partnership for Public Health, a North Carolina “Incubator” [link to http://nciph.sph.unc.edu/incubator/ ] project also coordinated by the Institute, is completing phase I of the program. The phase III project proposal is currently under development, seeking American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funding. 
Dr. John Graham
With the completion of phase II, “virtually every rural and underserved community that depends on one of the state’s 104 public community hospitals will benefit,” says project coordinator John Graham, PhD, a deputy director of the N.C. Institute for Public Health. NCTN will enable the adoption of instructional and medical technologies that will improve medical care. Examples of these technologies include multimedia medical education tools, Web-based electronic health records and health information exchanges, and high-resolution medical image transmission. “Ultimately this system will save lives,” Graham says. Graham points out that these broadband networks position public nonprofit hospital providers to secure federal stimulus funding as early adopters of electronic health records. This would result in millions of dollars in support of local health care. Graham also foresees the creation of both telecommunications and health care jobs related to the implementation of the N.C. Telehealth Network. For more information: Dr. John Graham can be reached at (919) 966-8450, jwgraham@email.unc.edu. Gillings School of Global Public Health contact: Ramona DuBose, director of communications, (919) 966-7467, ramona_dubose@unc.edu. |
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