Ricketts selected as News and Observer’s ‘Tar Heel of the Week’
| May 30, 2011 | |
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Tom Ricketts has always had a pickup truck. He lives on a dirt road, gets his water from a well and doesn’t have cable TV. Yet despite his ‘rural credentials,’ the University of North Carolina professor is as worldly as they come.
Dr. Tom Ricketts
So begins an article in the Sunday, May 29 edition of The (Raleigh, N.C.) News and Observer honoring Thomas Ricketts, PhD, as the newspaper’s “Tar Heel of the Week.” Ricketts is professor of health policy and management at UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, editor of North Carolina Medical Journal and Gillings Visiting Professor at Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sante Publique in France. The News and Observer periodically features individuals from all walks of life whose work benefits the people of North Carolina.
Ricketts, who received a Master of Public Health and doctoral degree in health policy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has been a member of the public health school’s faculty since 1989 and deputy director for policy analysis at UNC’s Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research since 1994. In 1988, he founded the Rural Health Research Center at UNC-Chapel Hill, which was among the first of its kind in the country. In fall 2010, he was one of 15 national experts appointed to the new National Health Care Workforce Commission, an independent body that advises Congress and the administration on health workforce policy.His expertise is in rural health care, policy development and implementation, and comparative national health policies. In France, he is helping develop a French graduate curriculum for health policy and management and working to streamline public health degrees across European nations.
An avid bicyclist, Ricketts has raced in amateur stretches of the Tour de France and regularly bikes around campus and throughout North Carolina. Read more of The News and Observer article and more about Dr. Ricketts’ Gillings Visiting Professorship. UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health contact: Ramona DuBose, director of communications, (919) 966-7467 or ramona_dubose@unc.edu. |
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