Linnan selected for UNC’s Bryan Public Service Award

Laura Linnan, ScD, associate professor of health behavior and health education at UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, has been selected as a winner of the 2011 Robert E. Bryan Public Service Award.

 

A graduate of Harvard University, Linnan has been on the faculty of the UNC public health school and a member of UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center since 1999. Her 25-year career in public health has focused on the promotion of health in the workplace, including on specific programs that help low-income workers lose weight and become healthier and on addressing health disparities among African-Americans and Latinos.

 

Linnan is “a genius” at using community-based participatory research methods, according to her nominator, Jo Anne Earp, ScD, professor and chair of the health behavior and health education department. Linnan recruited and retained more than 2,000 overweight employees at 17 N.C. community colleges and 14 historically black colleges and universities. Her success, Earp said, is due to the fact that she empowered advisory group members to help shape the research design according to the colleges’ economic and cultural needs.

 

“For Dr. Linnan,” Earp wrote, “practice/service is not something she does ‘on the side’ or ‘in addition to’ research. It is part of the seamless fabric of her research. She integrates it into every research effort she undertakes, every class she teaches, every student or employee she mentors, and even in her recent comprehensive redesign of our master’s program. Her approach to research has translated into profound health and social benefits for the citizens of North Carolina.”

 

Lynn Blanchard, PhD, is director of the Carolina Center for Public Service, which administers the award. “Laura Linnan’s work exemplifies what we mean by engaged scholarship,” Blanchard said. “As a former public health practitioner, she knows the importance of connecting the academic enterprise to real world issues. She directs her scholarly endeavors in ways that address some of the profound challenges faced in North Carolina. As a result, her research has an impact on those with whom she works, both in the community and in the University.”

 

First presented in 2000, the Bryan Award honors the memory and accomplishments of alumnus Robert E. Bryan (’26) of Newton Grove, N.C., who worked his way through Carolina to become a successful businessperson, entrepreneur and public servant. The award recognizes students and members of the UNC-Chapel Hill faculty and staff who, as representatives of the university, have demonstrated outstanding service to the state of North Carolina through working in partnership with community members, inspiring and involving others, responding to a practical concern of the state and working to ensure that the impact of their efforts in the community is lasting.

 

Previous awardees from the public health school include staff member Megan Ellenson, MPH, who received the award while a health behavior and health education master’s student (2008); John Graham, PhD, deputy director for outreach and consultation at the School’s N.C. Institute for Public Health (2006); and former epidemiology student David Edwards (2004).

 

Linnan will accept her award at a reception on Friday, April 1, at UNC’s George Watts Hill Alumni Center.

 

UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health contact: Ramona DuBose, director of communications, (919) 966-7467 or ramona_dubose@unc.edu.