Photo: Dr. John W. Hatch and scholarship recipients

Dr. John W. Hatch (center) poses with recipients of the Hatch-Barnhill Fellowship

The Hatch-Barnhill Scholarship helps us recruit and train the best and brightest students to do critical work addressing health equity. Attracting top students has become more competitive, and we need additional resources to offer a scholarship that is on par with financial support offered by our peer institutions. Please consider making a contribution to support these talented and committed students.

Our students want to address health inequities; our graduates are challenging the root causes of the problem at home and around the world. They work to eliminate health disparities like these:

  • Lung cancer is more dangerous and more often deadly for African-Americans than for whites. This disparity persists from diagnosis, to treatment, to survival. For example, lung cancer rates for African-American men are 15% higher than those of white men and the 5-year survival rate for all African-Americans is 16% higher than for whites.
  • Intimate partner violence touches one in three women and one in four men in the U.S.  In 2016 in North Carolina, 82 individuals were murdered by an intimate partner. It is difficult to estimate the number of survivors and the extent of the effect violence has had on their lives.
  • The side effects of metastatic breast cancer aren’t just physical. Financial toxicity – severe negative financial consequences  – especially affects uninsured women with this cancer. In a recent study of 1,054 women, nearly 70 percent reported being worried about financial problems that resulted from their cancer. About one third lacked insurance, and uninsured women were more likely to refuse or delay treatment due to cost, skip non-medical bills, stop working after diagnosis, or to have been contacted by a collection agency.
  • Smoking kills up to half its users, yet thousands of young people in the U.S. start smoking every day, joining the estimated 1.1 billion smokers worldwide. In the U.S., menthol tobacco products are marketed aggressively to African-Americans, other communities of color, women and youth. Eighty-five percent of African-Americans prefer tobacco products with menthol, and these products are promoted through localized advertising and promotional pricing in predominantly low-income or African-American neighborhoods.
  • The HPV vaccine protects against a cancer-causing virus, yet less than half of adolescents complete the full series. Changing the way providers offer the vaccine could increase the number of individuals completing the vaccination series.

The Hatch-Barnhill Scholarship is a tribute to Dr. John Hatch and the late Howard Barnhill and reflects their enduring commitment to health equity and student support.

The health center approach included community farms as an integral part of addressing health. Dr. John W. Hatch (left) is seen here with a community member.

Dr. Jack Geiger (left) and John Hatch oversee construction at the Delta Health Center in Mound Bayou, Miss.

A donation to the Hatch Barnhill Scholarship fund supports students and honors John Wesley Hatch, DrPH, Kenan professor emeritus, who, together with Jack Geiger, established the Delta Health Center in Mound Bayou in Mississippi. Hatch and Geiger pioneered the community health center approach to health in the Delta Center based on the then-radical notion that offering basic health services was not enough to raise the standard of health. As faculty members Hatch and Barnhill were innovators, mentors and catalysts in building the community-based, health-equity focused strength that continues to draw many talented committed students to study here.

For over twenty years, the Hatch-Barnhill Scholarship has been a powerful tool to recruit and support talented students in the Department of Health Behavior. We seek to expand the impact of the scholarship, and we hope you will consider joining us. To make a gift in support of the Hatch-Barnhill Scholarship, click here today.

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SPH Advancement
135 Dauer Drive
107 Rosenau Hall, CB #7400
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(919) 966-0198