Hello, and welcome back to our “Deep Dive” series, where we investigate how schools got their reputations for excellence in particular fields and whether they live up to their name. Make no mistake; the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill is academically strong across the board, so we can’t call its renowned Gillings School of Global Public Health a hidden gem by any means, but, if you’re looking into a career in epidemiology, maternal and child health, health policy, nutrition, or public health leadership (just to name a few professional tracks that fall under the umbrella of global health studies), you’re probably trying to see how various programs stack up (especially given the varying cost of degrees between institutions).
So what makes UNC stand out in the field of public health, and what kind of results can a scholar at Gillings generally expect if they put the work in? We’ve been sending students passionate about the intersection of medicine and public policy to UNC-Chapel Hill for years, and you should keep reading to find out why we recommend it as an example of a particularly impactful program within a larger college akin to Neuroscience at UMich, Computer Science at Dartmouth, Foreign Language at Middlebury, Aeronautics at Rice, and Business at Penn.
The History of Public Health at UNC-Chapel Hill
As is the case often in scholarship, the development of this influential academic program can at least partially attribute its success to early adoption. In its founding year of 1940, UNC-Chapel Hill was only the fourth school of public health to exist in the U.S. at all and the first, full-stop, to be established at a state school.
Originally an offshoot of the medical school, the school of public health has since come to comprise seven departments and one program — Biostatistics, Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Epidemiology, Health Behavior, Health Policy and Management, Maternal and Child Health, Nutrition, and Public Health Leadership and Practice.
It’s fair to say that the prestige of this program, and the influence of its scholarship, come from its history of approaching healthcare in a social context, and it has greatly benefited from its holistic research on how culture, global politics, environment, and human behavior impact well-being, treatment, and patient outcomes.
Since then, the school has continued to put its money where its mouth is (in fact, it got the “Gillings” part of its name in 2008, thanks to a generous $50 million gift that constituted “the largest single gift in the history of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill” at the time). But the Gillings School’s legacy as an institutional trailblazer goes beyond the numbers; “From its earliest days, the School has had a strong moral compass,” observes its former dean, Barbara K. Rimer, DrPH. “That’s why it was a hospitable place for a group of South African anti-apartheid faculty who emigrated here in the 1960s. That’s why Dan Okun (the late environmental sciences and engineering professor) and other faculty members marched for civil rights in that era. And that’s why a great deal of our research was and is focused on overcoming health disparities.”
Ok, UNC-Chapel Hill, you have the receipts, and we see you!
The State of Public Health at UNC-Chapel Hill
And, you might wonder, does the Gillings School of Global Public Health live up to its illustrious track record today? We’re SO glad you asked, because we get to point you toward the extremely fun facts and figures that prove this school is still at the top of its game (and honestly? Go Tar Heels while we’re at it!).
Here’s a quick run-down of the highlights:
According to the most recent edition of the U.S. News & World Report, UNC-Chapel Hill is ranked second nationally against all schools of public health, and they’re #1 among public schools. Pretty sick if you ask us… you can’t get better than the best.
They have pretty unparalleled resources. We’re talking over $1 billion in research grants awarded since 2018, with $204 million in 2024 alone and an average of $1.14 million in funding per faculty principal investigator.
In terms of scope, UNC-Chapel Hill has active fieldwork in 6 continents, 57 countries, and all 100 counties in North Carolina.
Their integrated perspective on governance, healthcare, and society keeps them consistently innovative; consider, for example, that the Nutrition Department “is the only nutrition department in the U.S. that is situated in both a school of public health and a school of medicine.”
Last year, 98% of graduates had their next steps figured out (meaning they left with a job or had a spot in continued higher education programs).
And putting their mission to promote healthcare equity into practice, 23% of students who graduated in the last 2 years work in medically underserved communities.
That’s it, then! The verdict is in: UNC-Chapel Hill’s school of public health is decidedly NOT A CATFISH. In fact, it’s pretty freaking fantastic. Congrats, carpe diem, good luck, and thank you in advance to all our aspiring global health scholars out there!
If you dream of ending up at the Gillings School of Global Public Health, reach out to us for personalized counseling that can make you the most competitive applicant you can be.