UNC conference to provide tools for care providers working with mothers who are substance-abusers

A Wednesday (March 31) conference at UNC’s William and Ida Friday Center for Continuing Education will explore issues related to illegal drug use among pregnant women and mothers.

The purpose of the one-day regional conference, "Working with Substance Using Pregnant Women and Mothers: the Whys and the Hows," is to help care providers prepare to identify and work with substance-using pregnant women and mothers.

The conference is sponsored by UNC Horizons, a program of the UNC School of Medicine’s department of obstetrics and gynecology that is supported by federal and state funds, UNC Hospitals and the Orange County Partnership for Young Children.

The registration fee for the conference, including lunch and materials, is $35.

UNC Horizons specializes in recovery for pregnant women, mothers and their children. The program is marking its 10^th anniversary with the conference.

"This conference is an opportunity for Horizons to share its 10 years of experience working with this vulnerable, often maligned and often invisible population," Dr. John Thorp, medical director of UNC Horizons and a professor in UNC’s School of Medicine.

"Our hope is that participants will leave with the knowledge and the tools to identify and engage substance-using women in discussion about their use and its impact on themselves and their children," Thorp said. "Also, we want to let the community know of the good resources that are available for families."

For more information and a full schedule of the day’s events, click on http://www.uncobgyn.com or call Debbie Stanford at (919) 966-9803.

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Prominent South African human rights activist to deliver Hochbaum lecture Monday

Graeme Simpson, the co-founder and executive director of the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, will deliver the Godfrey M. Hochbaum Distinguished Lecture Monday (March 29) at UNC’s School of Public Health.

He will give a talk titled "Revealing Is Healing: The Psycho-social and Political Context of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission" at noon in Rosenau Auditorium, 133 Rosenau Hall.

Simpson, a prominent South African human rights activist, is on campus as a Cecil G. Sheps Visiting Scholar in Social Justice.

The Godfrey M. Hochbaum Distinguished Lecture was established in 1988 to pay tribute to Dr. Godfrey Hochbaum, a professor in the School of Public Health’s department of health behavior and health education from 1972 through 1988, and professor emeritus in that department from 1988 through 2000.

Hochbaum is noted among public health scientists worldwide for the development of the "Health Belief Model" as a means of understanding why people do or don’t do what is healthy for them.

The Cecil G. Sheps Visiting Scholar in Social Justice Fund was established to bring distinguished scholars to campus who illuminate the need for social justice and ways in which social justice can be achieved.

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Disaster management program to offer emergency management credentialing

The UNC School of Public Health’s community preparedness and disaster management program will provide credentialing for graduates through an agreement with the International Association of Emergency Managers.

Those who successfully complete the one-year certificate program can go on to receive a certified emergency manager credentialing after fulfilling experience-based and educational requirements, writing an essay and taking a comprehensive exam.

About 600 emergency managers are certified, said Craig Marks, director of the UNC program. The International Association of Emergency Managers recently voted to give UNC exclusive rights to offer the course and work with the association to develop a program model to be used nationwide.

Now in its second year, the disaster management certificate program is expanding to include certificates related to homeland security and business continuity, as well.

For more information on the disaster management certificate program, click on http://disastermanagement.unc.edu.

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News Services contact: Deb Saine, (919) 962-8415 or deborah_saine@unc.edu