HB capstone team wins state planning award for work with Department on Aging

Left to right are award-winning capstone team members Phoebe Goldberg, Marcia Perritt, Laura Major, Rebecca Woodruff and Hannah Prentice-Dunn.

Phoebe Goldberg, Laura Major, Hannah Prentice-Dunn and Rebecca Woodruff, 2012 graduates of UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, and Marcia Perritt, who is pursuing a joint degree in health behavior and city and regional planning, were given the award for their Department of Health Behavior capstone project with the Orange County (N.C.) Department on Aging.

“These capstone students were key to the development of the 2012-2017 Orange County Master Aging Plan,” said Janice Tyler, director of the Orange County (N.C.) Department on Aging. “They provided the expertise to take our strategic planning to a new level. They applied the skills they were learning in the classroom to immediate use with this community-based planning effort. Their energy and enthusiasm spread throughout the project and kept department staff, community stakeholders and citizens engaged and highly motivated in what was a long planning process. The bottom line is we couldn’t have done it without them!”

“We are incredibly proud of the members of this capstone team,” said Megan Ellenson Landfried, MPH, program manager for the health behavior Master of Public Health degree. “They demonstrated unwavering commitment to their capstone work. Their work undoubtedly will have positive outcomes for the Orange County Department on Aging and older adults in Orange County for years to come.”

The capstone team members will be recognized formally at the N.C. Annual Conference Awards luncheon in Wilmington, N.C., on Sept. 27.

Read more about the health behavior capstone program.