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How Global Health Impacts Health Care in North Carolina

February 7, 2025
Global health issues may seem geographically distant, but they directly impact our local community through travel, immigration, emerging infectious diseases, and interconnected global economies. The ‘global’ in global health refers to the scope of problems, not just their location, which can be infectious diseases with pandemic potention. UNC’s global and...

ID Faculty Members, Fellows Present Studies During ID Week

October 10, 2024
ID Week took place October 16-19 in Los Angeles, CA, the joint annual meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America, the HIV Medicine Association, the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society and the Society of Infectious Diseases Pharmacists. UNC’s Division of Infectious Diseases was...

Long Covid Is Real: Researchers Seek Participants for NIH Study Trial During Long Covid Awareness Month

March 26, 2024
March is Long COVID Awareness Month, marking four years since COVID-19 was declared a pandemic. But while much of society has moved on from masking, quarantining, and isolating, there are many who are managing health problems long after having COVID-19.  Researchers at the Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases are participating in the NIH...

IAMIGHID: Amy James Loftis

March 25, 2024
In November 2020, Amy James Loftis was hyper-focused on keeping the Carolina community safe, building UNC’s COVID Surveillance Lab in three short months before the return of students. But there were many years leading up to that moment. Often described as the Institute’s secret weapon in the fight against global...

New Study Seeks to Enroll Covid+ Individuals For Fast Track Trial of Oral COVID-19 Treatment

March 20, 2024
The UNC Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases is now enrolling participants in a fast-track trial of an oral COVID-19 treatment known as Bemnifosbuvir (BEM). Currently, Paxlovid is used for treating COVID-19. However, it is known to interact with common drugs that treat cholesterol, blood clots, and other conditions....

Some of the Many Faces of HIV Research: Treatment, Prevention and Pursuing a Cure

December 13, 2022
HIV virus eradication is a complex health challenge due to its long-lived persistence and how it hides in latently infected cells that escape the body’s immune system. Effective HIV treatments have decreased the likelihood of someone developing AIDS, while helping individuals live long and healthy lives without transmission to sexual...

UNC Launches Largest COVID-19 Observational Study of its Kind in North Carolina

November 8, 2022
This study led by the UNC Institute for Global Health & Infectious Diseases, will enroll 7,500 COVID-positive individuals to answer some of the biggest questions about COVID-19. Investigators explain the study in this video. Over two years into the COVID-19 pandemic and researchers still are looking to answer some of...

Could Science Be Synonymous With Courage? The News This Week Is Timely

October 28, 2022
As Fischer and Wohl Fight Disease in Sub-Saharan Africa, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR) Selects UNC to be a Regional Emerging Special Pathogen Treatment Center (RESPTC). Read press announcement. Many courageous infectious disease specialists and other clinicians have not shied...

Wohl, Fischer Study Long Ebola Symptoms Which May Help Explain Long COVID

September 21, 2022
Survivors of the Ebola outbreak in 2014 report a wide range of lingering symptoms that include fatigue and muscle pain, as well as neurological issues. But not much has been known about the persistence and severity of the symptoms over time. Investigators from the Institute for Global Health & Infectious...

Study Demonstrates Black and Hispanic People in NC Have Highest Risk of Dying at Home Due to COVID-19

September 16, 2022
COVID-19 has become a leading cause of death and reduced life expectancy in the U.S., especially among Black and Latino populations. David Wohl, MD, member of the Institute for Global Health & Infectious Diseases and professor of medicine in infectious diseases, and first author Jessie Edwards, PhD, assistant professor in the...

Driven to make big change: spotlighting IGHID’s Global HIV Prevention and Treatment Clinical Trials Unit (CTU)

June 15, 2022
Infectious disease research at the UNC Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases (IGHID) attracts unique people driven to make big change in the world. As HIV/AIDS turned 40 in 2021, the world was immersed in a different pandemic, one that brought reminders of the tremendous change science made possible...

UNC investigators help prove a monoclonal antibody prevents, treats COVID-19 in nursing homes

January 21, 2021
  Eli Lilly today released results of a clinical trial that found bamlanivimab, a monoclonal antibody, significantly reduced the risk of contracting COVID-19 among residents and staff of long-term care facilities. The Phase 3 trial was conducted in partnership with the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and...

COVID-19: A Year

December 30, 2020
Presented by David Wohl, MD, professor of medicine, UNC Division of Infectious Diseases Wohl is site leader of UNC’s Global Infectious Diseases Clinical Research Group at Chapel Hill. For the past year, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Wohl has been serving as medical director of the COVID-19 vaccination clinics at UNC...

NIH funds study aimed at improving access to COVID-19 testing for underserved North Carolina communities

November 30, 2020
  A team of investigators from UNC’s Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases has been awarded $1.5 million from the National Institutes of Health to conduct a two-year implementation science study to scale up COVID-19 testing in North Carolina. The researchers will examine the impact of a COVID screening...

ACTG honors David Wohl, MD, with first Charles van der Horst Humanitarian Award

November 24, 2020
ACTG names second new award for former UNC neurology professor, Kevin Robertson The national AIDS Clinical Trials Group expanded its annual recognition program in 2020 with two new awards named for University of North Carolina faculty members who died in 2019: Charles van der Horst, MD, an infectious diseases physician...

Promising COVID-19 drug is part of global study being led by UNC researchers

November 16, 2020
  Last week’s authorization by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for emergency use of bamlanivimab feels like a shot in the arm, so to speak, for David Wohl, MD, a UNC infectious diseases physician and researcher. A monoclonal antibody developed by Eli Lilly to treat mild to moderate COVID-19,...

Wohl launches clinical trial, one of 25 sites nationally testing COVID-19 treatments

September 1, 2020
  UNC Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases researchers have begun phase 2 and phase 3 evaluations of promising treatments for COVID-19. The UNC School of Medicine joins more than 25 initial sites participating in the clinical trials through ACTIV-2, a public-private partnership sponsored by the NIH’s National Institute...

ID faculty organize, conduct COVID-19 testing in hard-hit Lee County, NC

July 29, 2020
  It’s hot (especially wearing full PPE), it’s tedious, and it’s critical. A volunteer team of UNC infectious diseases faculty members along with UNC hospitalists has been conducting drive-up testing for COVID-19 in Sanford, NC, about 35 miles south of Chapel Hill, twice a month since June, seeing roughly 1,000...

Faculty affiliates turn focus to COVID-19 treatments, prevention research

April 6, 2020
  Researchers within UNC’s School of Medicine are working tirelessly to provide knowledge to impact the current COVID-19 pandemic and future pandemics. “UNC SOM is home to many world-renowned experts on infectious disease and virology,” says Blossom Damania, Boshamer Distinguished Professor and Vice Dean for Research at the UNC School...

Report from China: Linghua Li, MD, PhD, shares COVID-19 observations

March 21, 2020
Linghua Li, MD, PhD, is an infectious disease specialist and AIDS clinic director at Eighth People’s Hospital in Guangzhou, China. She did two years of postdoctoral training in infectious diseases at Duke University and at UNC, working with the Institute’s David Wohl, MD. Here, she reports from the frontlines on dealing with COVID-19 in Guangzhou, which...