Institute receives award

CHAPEL HILL -- The service and outreach arm of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Gillings School of Global Public Health has received an award in recognition of its "significant contributions" to public health in the state.

The North Carolina Institute for Public Health was presented with the Partners in Public Health Distinguished Group Award at the N.C. Public Health Association's annual conference in Asheville earlier this month.

The award citation recognized the institute's achievements, including reaching health professionals in all 100 counties with training and continuing education programs; training about 20,000 North Carolina adults each year; and providing continuing education services to neighboring states, throughout the United States and internationally.

The institute is in its 10th year as a teaching, consulting and research link between the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health and public health practitioners.

Federal library internships

CHAPEL HILL -- Students to continue valued internships at federal libraries

Library science students at UNC will be able to intern at two federal libraries for another five years under terms of a new agreement.

UNC's School of Information and Library Science recently signed a new contract with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Library that extends a 35-year internship agreement.

Since it began, more than 350 students have interned at the EPA Library and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) Library, both in Research Triangle Park.

The renewal comes at a time when CollegeGrad.com, which does an annual survey of entry-level recruitment, has reported that employers are cutting back on internships during the recession, hiring two percent fewer interns this year than last.

NIH awards UNC grant

CHAPEL HILL -- The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has been awarded $2.5 million from the National Institutes of Health to establish a new cooperative research center for studies of sexually transmitted infections (STIs).

The new Southeastern STI Cooperative Research Center will be based at UNC and directed by Fred Sparling, M.D., professor of medicine and microbiology and immunology in the School of Medicine.

The five-year award will support the work of collaborating groups at UNC, Emory, Virginia Commonwealth University and Duke universities, as well as the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md.

The goal is to determine the feasibility of vaccines for Neisseria gonorrhoeae and Haemophilus ducreyi, the bacteria which cause gonorrhea and chancroid. Researchers say the need for a vaccine is critical given recent trends in antibiotic resistance among these types of STIs.

The center's interdisciplinary work involves microbiology, genetics, immunology and animal models as well as studies in humans, with six research projects and three overlapping cores.

The new center extends the work of a prior UNC center which was funded for 19 years. Of six former STI centers competing for research dollars, UNC was the only one funded.