This Week @ Gillings: The Abstract

September 12, 2022

Whether you’re local or global, student or alumni, the Abstract’s weekly news digest will help you stay in the loop with our amazing Gillings School community.

UNC Department of Biostatistics continues to be the highest degree-granting program for doctoral and undergraduate programs in biostatistics

Since 2003, the Department of Biostatistics at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health has conferred the highest average amount of doctoral and undergraduate degrees among biostatistics programs in the nation. In the last five years (2017-2021), they have also conferred the most doctoral and undergraduate degrees overall.

In an annual update of statistics and biostatistics degree data, shared recently by the American Statistical Association (ASA), the University of North Carolina was identified as no. 1 among:

All data has been taken from the National Center for Education Statistics, which includes biostatistics degrees as categorized by the CIP Code 26.1102.

Learn more.


Beugre featured in articles from Science and National Institutes of Health

Kinue Beugre, MPA, a social and clinical research assistant at the Collaborative Studies Coordinating Center within the Department of Biostatistics, had her journey through pregnancy and lupus profiled in Science magazine and was featured in an article by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The article in Science, “The Pregnancy Gap,” was published in Science, Vol 375, Issue 6586, and features Beugre as part of a larger look at the lack of evidence on drug safety in pregnancy. Read the full article online.

This story was also featured as part of a larger article by the NIH, “Tackling the Complexity of Pregnancy Through Research Inclusion and Equity: We Need a New Playbook,” which highlights the need to address health inequities among mothers and birthing people of color.


Levintow receives funding to study COVID-19 transmission in NC jails

Dr. Sara Levintow

Dr. Sara Levintow

Congratulations to Sara Levintow, PhD, assistant professor of epidemiology, who has received a K01 Mentored Research Scientist Development Award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This five-year grant will build Levintow’s expertise in studying infectious disease dynamics in populations involved in the criminal legal system.

Her proposed research will model SARS-CoV-2 transmission dynamics in county jail populations in North Carolina and estimate the impacts of interventions on COVID-19 morbidity and mortality.

Other faculty involved will include Kimberly Powers, PhD, David Rosen, MD, PhD, Lauren Brinkley-Rubinstein, PhD, Justin Lessler, PhD, and Jess Edwards, PhD.


Remembering Dr. Melvin Pinn Jr.

UNC Gillings alum and renowned physician, Melvin Pinn Jr., MD, MPH ’90 (health policy and management), passed away on July 26. Committed to health care for marginalized communities, Pinn was a pioneer who served as the first Black attending physician at Charlotte Memorial Hospital, now Atrium Health. He also served as an example for his two daughters who both went on to become physicians themselves.

At Charlotte’s northwestern Neighborhood Medical Center, he worked to address adolescent pregnancy as well as HIV and AIDS and strove to connect with his patients on a personal level. His work was widely honored, including by the American Association of Family Physicians which awarded him Family Physician of the Year in 1998.

In addition to his wife, Evora J. Pinn, Melvin is survived by his three children – Dr. Tanika Pinn, Dr. Melva Pinn-Bingham, and Melvin Pinn III – and by his three grandchildren, Nadia, McKinley and Leland. A memorial service was held at Friendship Missionary Baptist Church in Charlotte, N.C. Read his obituary.

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