Carolina launches Collaborating Center on Social Innovation in Health
This new facility will nurture grounds-up community-engaged health innovation and research in the Americas and globally.
Carolina announced April 27 the launch of a new Collaborating Center on Social Innovation in Health at UNC-Chapel Hill, designated by the Pan American Health Organization and the World Health Organization.
The center will collaborate closely with PAHO country offices, WHO programs and a network of academic and community partners. Initial activities will focus on strengthening vaccination uptake, improving access to sexual and reproductive health services and supporting digital health innovations that reach underserved populations.
The center will be co-directed by Liz Chen, an associate professor at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, and Joe Tucker, a professor at the UNC School of Medicine. Both are members of the UNC Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases.
“Communities are already innovating to solve urgent health challenges,” Chen said. “Our role is to partner with them — bringing rigorous methods, global networks and sustained support to help these solutions reach more people.”
Tucker added, “This center reflects a growing recognition that equity requires new models of engagement. By working alongside communities, policymakers and practitioners, we can accelerate solutions that are both evidence-based and grounded in lived experience.”
Core priorities of the Collaborating Center include:
- Co-creation and community engagement: advancing participatory approaches such as crowdsourcing, designathons and community-led research
- Evidence generation and scale-up: evaluating social innovations and supporting their adaptation across diverse settings
- Capacity strengthening: training early-career researchers, practitioners and community leaders in social innovation methods
- Policy translation: working with ministries of health and regional partners to integrate proven innovations into health systems
Social innovation in health focuses on community-led, locally adapted solutions that strengthen health systems and expand access to care. Building on UNC-Chapel Hill’s long-standing leadership in global health, human-centered design and implementation science, the new collaborating center will support countries and communities in designing, testing and scaling innovations that are effective, ethical and sustainable.
“PAHO is pleased to partner with UNC to advance social innovation in health across the Americas,” said Luis Gabriel Cuervo, a senior adviser at PAHO. “This collaborating center will help translate community-driven ideas into scalable solutions that improve health outcomes.”
The designation as a WHO Collaborating Center recognizes UNC-Chapel Hill’s leadership in global health research and its commitment to community engagement, partnership and impact. The center will also contribute to global learning by sharing tools, case studies and best practices with countries and organizations worldwide.
