John W. Hatch came to UNC-Chapel Hill in 1970 to work at the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research and soon enrolled as a doctoral student at UNC’s School of Public Health. He became a professor in what is now the Department of Health Behavior, studying health promotion and disease prevention. His work with Jack Geiger, MD, in the 1960s, at the Delta Health Center, in Mound Bayou, Miss., proved the value of community health centers, especially in Black and rural communities. He retired in 1995 as W.R. Kenan Jr. Professor Emeritus of health behavior.
The Hatch-Barnhill Scholarship, established in 1997, honors two distinguished former faculty members in the Gillings School’s health behavior department, Dr. Hatch and the late Howard Barnhill. Both men dedicated their careers to community-based public health programs and advocacy on behalf of the poor and underserved in North Carolina, across the country and around the world, and both took an active interest in mentoring students interested in public health practice, especially students of color.
