December 08, 2009
Dr. Anna Schenck

Dr. Anna Schenck

Anna Schenck, PhD, leads the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health’s Public Health Leadership Program (PHLP) as director, effective Dec. 1, the School has announced. Schenck is expected to be appointed Professor of the Practice of Public Health, effective Feb. 1, 2010, pending approval in January by the UNC Board of Trustees. In the interim, she will serve as a Visiting Professor in the program.

“The Public Health Leadership Program is very pleased with the appointment of Dr. Schenck,” said William A. Sollecito, DrPH, clinical professor in the program and its director since 2000.

Sollecito, who will continue his role as a faculty member in PHLP, stepped down as director to focus more energy on the program’s global health expansion and to pursue other academic interests, including work on two books about continuous quality improvement in health care.

“I could not have made the transition that I planned without the assurance that a strong leader would succeed me as director of PHLP,” Sollecito said. “I am particularly pleased to be able to turn over the leadership of the program to someone as experienced as Anna Schenck. I have every confidence that Anna will continue the legacy of quality, growth and innovation that has marked PHLP’s development over the years.”

The mission of the Public Health Leadership Program, one of eight academic units at the UNC public health school, is to prepare public health practitioners for leadership positions. Through certificate and graduate degree programs, offered in both traditional and distance-learning formats, the program helps develop population-level knowledge and skills with an interdisciplinary emphasis. Students participate and learn collaboratively, building upon their varied professional experience.

The program supports practitioners in developing a command of key public health components, including the abilities to assess community health needs, develop innovative policies and programs, and assure that new systems are maintained and improved.

“Anna’s extensive public health practice experience, particularly her background in practice-based research, is very much in keeping with the mission of PHLP,” Sollecito said. “Most importantly, she brings an informed transdisciplinary approach – developed as a graduate of two of the School’s departments and through her diverse work experience – that is critical to PHLP’s mission.”

Schenck, an adjunct faculty member in the UNC Department of Health Behavior and Health Education from 1999 to 2009, received a Master of Science in Public Health in health education in 1983 and a doctorate in epidemiology in 1997 from the UNC public health school. She was associated with The Carolinas Center for Medical Excellence, in Cary, N.C., beginning in 1997, first as a senior epidemiologist and then, from 2007 to 2009, as director of research. She was selected as PHLP director during a national search that began last spring.

“I am honored to have been selected for this position and very excited to be joining the School and the Public Health Leadership Program,” Schenck said. “The PHLP faculty members are doing amazing work – providing physicians, nurses and public health practitioners with skills in public health leadership. I hope to contribute to the mission by creating opportunities for faculty and students to work collaboratively with those delivering public health services.”

“We are so pleased to welcome Dr. Schenck,” said Barbara K. Rimer, DrPH, dean of the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. “She has extensive experience both as a public health practitioner and as an applied researcher whose work has had a direct impact on policy decisions and the state and national levels. She has served our School as an active alumna of two departments, Epidemiology and Health Behavior and Health Education, and is distinguished by her leadership experience. I have every confidence that she will build further on the success of the program previously led by Bill Sollecito, especially in the interdisciplinary role the PHLP plays at the School and across campus.”

 

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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