We see that every day. From finding new cures to providing new scholarships, at Carolina we know that the best is yet to come. And we hope you see it, too.
This site is a resource and playground. It is a place where you can learn about some of the incredible stories that happen here. Or perhaps you have a story to share? Help us create this site by sharing something bold, innovative or inspirational that you experienced at Carolina, particularly because a private donation made it possible. Anything is possible here, but it isn’t free. Thankfully we have generous donors who see the potential and help make it happen.
We know there are many more to tell, maybe even yours.
We want to hear them. We need your help to collect them.
Click here to share your stories or the ones you’ve heard. This is your site, so help us fill it with all the ways Carolina is making a difference in the world.
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More Than Just Pushing A button
Addy Petetan-Benitez, a first-generation student and senior in the Division of Radiologic Science, is passionate about helping others and is taking advantage of her education to do so.
“Radiologic science is very important to the health-care system,” Petetan-Benitez said. “People think it’s just a matter of pushing a button and that’s it, but it takes so much more than that for us to get a good quality image.
“I feel really proud, and I like to put pride into the work I put out. Knowing that I am part of that process to help the patient get better and get a good diagnostic reading is a very good feeling for me.”
Privately funded scholarships, like the Drs. Jerome Puryear and Latonya Brown-Puryear Endowed Scholarship in Radiologic Science she received during her undergraduate career, has given her the financial support to make a difference.
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string(3322) "A team of researchers at the UNC School of Medicine and the UNC Adams School of Dentistry will lead a multinational project to better understand, treat and prevent childhood diseases, thanks to a $3.5 million grant from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI).The team’s research will seek to better understand how cells lining the nose, mouth and airways interact to maintain respiratory health or play roles in diseases throughout childhood. The project is part of larger collaboration, supported by $33 million in CZI grants, spanning groups of researchers across 15 countries that will contribute to the global Human Cell Atlas – a kind of Google Earth view of human cell architecture. Coordinating principal investigator James S. Hagood, Professor of Pediatric Pulmonology at the UNC School of Medicine, said, “We have made important strides in preventing and treating diseases in children over the last two decades, but we have much more work to do. We need to investigate how various environmental factors, such as air pollution and viruses, impact children around the world at the cellular level so we can generate better ways to help them.”The international team of clinical scientists will collect samples from six countries – Brazil, Germany, India, Malawi, the United States and Vietnam – to ensure inclusion of a variety of ancestral backgrounds.Co-principle investigator Richard Boucher, Director of the UNC Marsico Lung Institute and the UNC Cystic Fibrosis Center, said, “We have learned a lot about SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, but we need to learn more about how this virus and others affect cells in mouth and nose – where infection first takes hold – and how viruses and pollution affect human airways to produce chronic disease.”This award supports the Campaign for Carolina, the University’s most ambitious fundraising campaign in history, launched in October 2017 with a goal to raise $4.25 billion by December 2022.To read the complete Carolina Story, click here…"
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string(1921) "An initiative to improve birth outcomes for Black women by increasing their access to trained Black doulas has received the C. Felix Harvey Award to Advance Institutional Priorities at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.Venus Standard, assistant clinical professor in the UNC School of Medicine’s Department of Family Medicine, will lead the pilot doula training program that was selected for the $75,000 award. Doulas are trained professionals who guide mothers and families before, during and after childbirth.Black women in the United States die at three to four times the rate of Non-Hispanic white and Hispanic women during childbirth, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found. Standard believes that helping connect Black women and Black doulas presents a potential solution to those elevated birth risks.“Having somebody that looks like you, that understands your struggle, your culture, and how to relate to you [is] unquestionably beneficial,” Standard said. Funds from the award will be used to train two cohorts of 10 women at the UNC Family Medicine Center. The doulas will be recruited from Orange County and surrounding areas, and Standard expects training for the first cohort to begin in May and conclude by mid-summer.Read more to learn about this new training program..."
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string(1747) "Funded by a grant from the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), a new program called the 21st Century Environmental Health Scholars (21EH Scholars) will help increase diversity and access to the field of environmental health sciences. The program is a collaboration among the UNC Institute for the Environment, the Curriculum in Toxicology and Environmental Medicine in the UNC School of Medicine and the Department of Biological and Biomedical Sciences at North Carolina Central University (NCCU). 21EH Scholars is designed to support students who are underrepresented in STEM fields. “In 21EH Scholars, we’re broadening access to environmental health sciences research by engaging students who have typically been underrepresented in STEM disciplines,” said Kathleen Gray, research associate professor in the Institute and one of three principal investigators for the program. “To solve our most pressing environmental problems, we need the enhanced creativity and productivity typically associated with diverse teams, and we expect this program to ultimately contribute to a more diverse environmental health sciences workforce.”Read the complete Carolina Story…"
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