Your Gift. Your Impact.

Todd A. Durham, PhD ’16 (health policy and management), MS ’95 (biostatistics), and his wife, Heidi P. Durham, PharmD, are planning for the future. They’re not just thinking of themselves but also about family, their state and public health. They recently made a planned gift by donating an independent retirement account to the Gillings School to support priority initiatives under the discretion of the dean. “We are pleased to contribute to the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, its future success and the improved health of the citizens of North Carolina and the world in this way.”

“As far as we know, this is the first study to determine that among people at high risk for heat-related cardiovascular problems, people living in urban heat islands are especially vulnerable.”
Stephanie Cleland, PhD, a 2023 alum of the UNC-Chapel Hill Gillings School of Global Public Health, describes a key finding from a new study published in the journal Environment International. The study was part of her PhD dissertation research into how extreme heat and urban heat island intensity affect cardiovascular health, and it included data on more than 48 million hospitalizations in 120 United States cities over 18 years.

“As someone who belongs to a historically marginalized group, I have seen first-hand how issues such as cancer, chronic disease and mental illness have take a toll on my family and others in my community.”
Kiara Tompkins pursued an MPH degree to acquire the tools to address health disparities in underserved communities at the local and state level, with a particular interest in health literacy and health care access.
The fellowship she received is named after health education pioneer Lucy S. Morgan who helped grow the UNC health education department — now the UNC Gillings Department of Health Behavior — into the largest of its kind in the country, and oversaw, during the 1950s and ’60s, the training of almost half the country’s health educators.