Laura Linnan, ScD

Laura Linnan has more than 30 years of experience as a public health practitioner and researcher who works to eliminate chronic disease disparities with multi-level interventions designed and delivered in collaboration with the intended beneficiaries of these programs, policies or environmental supports. She is a professor in the Department of Health Behavior, Director and Principal Investigator of the Center for Healthy Work Design and Worker Well-Being (CCRWH), and serves as the Senior Associate Dean, Academic and Student Affairs for the Gillings School.

Dr. Linnan has a special focus on work and health. She led the team that developed, conducted and analyzed the Workplace Health in America Survey – a nationally representative survey of employers. She has been PI of the CDC-funded Workplace Health Research Network Coordinating Center, and as the Founding Director of the Carolina Collaborative for Research on Work and Health (CCRWH) she has mobilized an interdisciplinary group of researchers, employers and other partners who share the goal of planning, implementing and evaluating research to promote worker and workplace health. 

As work is a social determinant of health, she has also created a new graduate certificate program in Total Worker Health to build capacity in the workforce to train the next generation of health professionals in this new, merging field. Her applied intervention research has taken place in a variety of workplaces: community colleges/universities, beauty salons/barbershops, child care centers, schools and churches/faith-based organizations. She conducts innovative, mixed method research, and conducts rigorous process and outcome evaluations. In her capacity as Senior Associate Dean, Academic and Student Affairs, since 2016, Linnan has helped lead a number of important changes in the Gillings School. She serves as the chief academic officer for the Gillings School, overseeing the curriculum for more than 70 degree programs at the undergraduate, and graduate levels. She is also responsible for the appointments, promotion and tenure process for more than 230 Gillings faculty members on both tenure and fixed term tracks. And, she works closely with the Associate Dean for Student Affairs and the more than 30 professionals who support Gillings students from the initial recruitment process through graduation and beyond.