April 2, 2014

The Doctor of Medicine-Master of Public Health (MD-MPH) program at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was selected by the Association for Prevention Teaching and Research (APTR) to receive APTR’s 2014 Outstanding Educational Program Award.

The award honors innovative programs, departments or academic institutions for their involvement in advancing undergraduate or graduate medical education in prevention and public health and encouraging students’ interest in the discipline.

UNC’s MD-MPH program, a collaboration begun in 1997 between the University’s School of Medicine and Gillings School of Global Public Health, is one of the largest and most well-established of such programs in the U.S. The interdisciplinary program allows students to take advantage of eight public health academic units to offer a broad and flexible educational experience tailored to their needs.

Dr. Anthony Viera

Dr. Anthony Viera

At the Gillings School, the joint degree is coordinated through the Public Health Leadership Program’s Health Care and Prevention Master of Public Health degree program. Anthony Viera, MD, MPH, Charles Baynes Wilkerson Distinguished Scholar and associate professor of family medicine in UNC’s medical school, directs the Health Care and Prevention degree program.

About 20 percent of UNC medical students take a year during their traditional medical studies to pursue a Master of Public Health degree at the Gillings School. The current cohort is comprised of 56 students.

“The true credit for this award goes to Russ Harris, MD, MPH, who led the founding of the program and served as its director for 15 years, and to all our faculty who pour their hearts into teaching our students,” said Viera, who submitted the nomination. “We are proud of our students and all that they achieve.”

Viera, a 2006 alumnus of the Gillings School, accepted the award on March 21 during the APTR annual meeting, “Teaching Prevention 2014: Convergence of Technology, Innovation and Collaboration,” in Washington, D.C.


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Gillings School of Global Public Health contact: David Pesci, director of communications, (919) 962-2600 or dpesci@unc.edu.
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