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| CASTLE preschoolers laugh at their classmate’s Mr. Potato Head in an activity led by a UNC graduate student. |
Making the Difference
The Duke Endowment
A Partner for Better Health
By Yancy Strickland
During the Carolina First Campaign, The Duke Endowment provided tremendous support to UNC. Because both institutions share a similar mission to improve the quality of life for North Carolinians. The Duke Endowment Health Care Division provided more than $15 million for UNC programs aimed at improving health.
“We recognize that good health for individuals leads to productive and happy lives,” said Mary Piepenbring, director of Health Care for The Duke Endowment. “Today, more than ever, we need to work together to establish effective partnerships to target and address health care issues.”
The Duke Endowment’s overall mission is to improve lives and communities in the Carolinas through higher education, health care, rural churches and children’s services. Its vision for health care is to enhance the lives of individuals by improving access to quality health care and promoting prevention and wellness. Some of the programs that The Duke Endowment sponsored at UNC during Carolina First include:
- The Center for Acquisition of Spoken Language Through Listening Enrichment (CASTLE) is dedicated to providing quality auditory- oral early intervention and preschool services to children who are deaf or hard of hearing and their families. Piepenbring called CASTLE, part of the Ear and Hearing Center in the School of Medicine, a great example of UNC identifying a need and then developing a model program. “It is now so successful that the program has expanded statewide, addressing services for children with severe to profound hearing loss,” she said.
- The Comprehensive Advanced Medical Program of Spanish is an enrichment program offered to UNC medical students who have intermediate to advanced Spanish fluency. Its goal is to produce more doctors who can independently care for the increasing number of Latino patients in North Carolina. The program is funded by an initial founding grant of $125,000 and has received an additional $300,000 over the past three years.
- The Beacon Child and Family Program at UNC Hospitals provides services that help break the generational cycle of family violence and encourages caring attitudes in the delivery of patient care. The program developed a multi-site educational network that provides public health leaders, hospital administrators and clinicians access to the knowledge and skills needed to face the challenges of family abuse in every county in North Carolina.
- The North Carolina Public Health Academy, an initiative created by the School of Public Health-based N.C. Institute for Public Health (a Duke Endowment-supported organization), aims to bring UNC to all county health workers statewide. The academy helps people enter the public health profession and fosters professional development opportunities for those already in the field. The Duke Endowment seeded the program with an $873,000 grant over a three-year period.
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