Barbara V. Taylor Baylor, MPH, alumna of Gillings School of Global Public Health at The University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, has been selected as an American Public Health Association 2013 Public Health Fellow in Government.The APHA fellowship provides opportunities for public health professionals to see firsthand how public policy impacts public health and to offer their public health expertise to policy makers.
Baylor will work in Washington, D.C., for one year, focusing on legislative and policy issues including health, gun violence, Medicare, the Affordable Care Act and other public health concerns.
With more than 25 years experience as a public health professional, Baylor is currently employed by the national offices of the United Church of Christ, where she has provided leadership and guidance about health care reform and issues of social and economic justice. Her career began as a health educator at the Wake County (N.C.) Department of Health.
She serves as chair of APHAs equal health opportunity committee and is past chair of the caucus on public health and the faith community.
Baylor received a masters degree in what was then health behavior and health education (now health behavior) at the Gillings School in 1986. She says her work has been guided by the words of the late Guy Steuart, PhD, an anti-apartheid émigré from South Africa who chaired the Gillings School Department of Health Behavior from 1968 to 1985: Only some things are health-directed, but everything is health-related. Empowering individuals and community members to find their voices within their own networks commits her, she says, to a "bottom-up" approach to community health and wellness.
Gillings School of Global Public Health contact: David Pesci, director of communications, (919) 962-2600 or dpesci@unc.edu.