In 2003, Lee Thielen, a public health consultant under contract with the Colorado Foundation for Public Health and the Environment, made a study of the possible expansion, marketing and sustainability of the Management Academy for Public Health, located at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) Kenan-Flagler Business School and School of Public Health.

It is an executive education program for managers in the public health system. (See Program Results on ID# 033489 for a description of the academy.)

Key Recommendations
After interviewing about 80 public health leaders and other academy and public health stakeholders, Thielen made a series of recommendations that included the following:

• The academy should seek continuing, diversified support and a gradually expanded market, possibly limited to the southeastern United States.
• The academy's original funders — the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the federal Health Resources and Services Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) — should consider maintaining base funding for the academy, while also investing in new public health management training programs around the country as a means of advancing this work elsewhere.
• The four states (Georgia, Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina) that have benefited from the academy should assume a greater role in marketing and sustaining it.

Funding
RWJF supported this project with a grant of $59,607 from February 2003 through May 2004.