Georgia Southern University Awarded $100,000 Grant from The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

December 7, 2011

Georgia Southern University’s Jiann-Ping Hsu College of Public Health (JPHCOPH) has been awarded a $100,000 grant to help improve public health services for some of the state’s most at-risk citizens.

The grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation will be used to help improve the quality of services from public health departments around the state of Georgia. Researchers from JPHCOPH will work with the state’s health departments and the Georgia Public Health Practice-Based Research Network, housed at the JPHCOPH, to find ways to better address critical public health issues including obesity, diabetes and newly emerging infectious diseases.

“Georgia’s health departments are on the front lines of our battle for good public health,” said Dr. Lynn Woodhouse, interim dean of the JPHCOPH and a researcher with the Georgia Public Health Practice-Based Research Network. “Our goal with this grant and our research is to find ways to help build a better public health system to more effectively and efficiently face the new health challenges of the 21^st century.”

Researchers believe those improvements will translate into improved health of the people and communities served by public health agencies. The grant will support efforts to increase the use of quality improvement techniques that are specifically tailored for local public health agencies in Georgia.