Creating thought diversity: the antidote to group think.

The Management Moment is a regular column within the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice. Edward L. Baker, MD, MPH, MSc, serves as the Management Moment Editor. Dr Baker is Director of the North Carolina Institute for Public Health, School of Public Health, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This column provides commentary and guidance on timely management issues commonly encountered in public health practice.

UNC certificate program in core public health concepts: lessons learned.

OBJECTIVES: Public health workers need to be trained in the core public health sciences. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health created a Certificate in Core Public Health Concepts to meet the training needs of public health workers, primarily those working in state or local public health agencies. METHODS: This article examines the demographic, educational, job classification, and workplace characteristics of certificate program applicants from the first 3 years of the program. In addition, this article assesses student performance and graduate satisfaction with the program. RESULTS: Among the 273 applications reviewed, the majority were from females. They worked in a variety of job classifications: 19% were public health agency workers, 64% were public health system workers, and 17% worked in other occupations. Nearly all students received High Pass or Pass grades on courses. Initial data on graduate satisfaction with the program are positive. CONCLUSIONS: Implications of the findings for training the public health workforce are discussed.

Study finds Chapel Hill, NC, soup kitchen serves nutritious meals.

Soup kitchens attempt to improve the food security of low-income individuals, but the results of their efforts are rarely researched. We focused our study on the Inter-Faith Council Soup Kitchen (IFC) near the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (UNC) in Chapel Hill, NC. The IFC uses no centralized nutrition planning and relies heavily on volunteer cooks, yet we found their meals to be highly nutrient-dense when averaged over a 1-month time frame and compared with the Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs) and the Daily Reference Values (DRVs). In fact, the only nutrients needing improvement were vitamin D, folate, and calcium. The number of servings per meal was also substantially more than one third of the US Department of Agriculture Food Guide Pyramid recommendations, except for dairy at all meals, vegetables at breakfast, and fruit at dinner.