Community Involvement
UNC Health is committed to improving the health and well-being of our community. Each day, the physicians, staff and volunteers at UNC Health dedicate themselves to extending our mission of providing excellent health care beyond the walls of the hospital - to help build and sustain a healthy community.
We take great pride in supporting community initiatives and health services to help make a positive impact on the lives of our neighbors. We are proud of the hundreds of sponsored outreach efforts and thousands of volunteer hours our teammates provide to make our region a better place to live, work and play.
Community Initiatives
Efforts such as these demonstrate our commitment to the communities we serve. Only by working together can we overcome the challenges faced by our communities and help all North Carolinians live healthier lives.
Hospital Food Pantries
Keeping a home’s pantry stocked is a challenge for many North Carolinians. To address this, we partnered with Food Lion and the Food Bank of Central & Eastern North Carolina to open a food pantry at UNC REX Hospital in Raleigh. Likewise we partnered with the UNC Health Foundation to launch the FoodWell program at our Medical Center in Chapel Hill. Patients who indicate struggles with food access, receive a supply of healthy food, including fresh produce, staple items and healthy snacks. A third pantry is scheduled to open at our new hospital in Holly Springs on March 1.
Sort-A-Rama
School children who may have otherwise gone hungry during the summer months were helped by our colleagues who rolled up their sleeves for the Food Bank of Central & Eastern North Carolina’s Annual Sort-A-Rama event. When school is out, children often miss the two meals they were receiving during school hours. Sort-A-Rama helps fill the summer meal gap providing food throughout the summer. Since 2016, 130 UNC Health teammates have helped package over 776,000 meals through this initiative. This event is one of the largest corporate volunteer service gatherings in the state.
Stuff the Bus
UNC Health is committed to helping ensure local students start the school year with the supplies they need to be successful. UNC Health locations across the Triangle host an annual Stuff the Bus school supply drive in August to support students in our communities. Teammates collect and fill an entire school bus with supplies to be delivered as the traditional school year kicks off. Over the past 11 years the “Stuff the Bus” school supply drives have been a great success, collecting over 100,000 school supplies for Wake, Orange, Johnston, Durham and Chatham County students.
NC Med Assist-Mobile Free Pharmacy
UNC Health partnered with NC Med Assist and the SE Raleigh YMCA to host a Mobile Free Pharmacy event. This event provided residents in need with free over-the-counter (OTC) medication. Such items included cough and cold medicine, vitamins, allergy medication and first aid supplies. This partnership came at a crucial time, when remaining healthy and stopping the spread of germs is more essential than ever. More than 900 local residents were served, 26% of whom were uninsured.
Habitat for Humanity
UNC Health teammates have braved both freezing cold and high temperatures to build 6 Habitat for Humanity homes in the Triangle More than 400 colleagues participated in the construction, giving more than 2,000 hours of time. In addition to the home builds, UNC Health sponsored home preservation projects to help preserve affordable homeownership and assist homeowners to live in healthy, safe and accessible homes.
Blood Drives
UNC Health partnered with The Blood Connection to addresses the critical blood shortage. Since March 2020, we have partnered on 29 blood drives resulting in 4,216 units of blood. One donation of blood can save up to 3 lives. This total includes the largest blood drive which registered more than 1,000 people for a single day at the PNC Arena in March 2020.
Partnership and Sponsorship Requests
UNC Health’s Funding Priorities
We take great pride in supporting community initiatives and health services that positively impact our communities. UNC Health’s primary charitable focus is to support health and human services initiatives. Consideration is given to requests that support the Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA) for the counties in the Triangle, as well as initiatives that best align with UNC Health’s strategic priorities. To request UNC Health to sponsor an event or support a program, please check back in late June for the updated FY25 Sponsorship application. Please note that applications for sponsorship must be submitted a minimum of 90 days before your event/program/initiative.
For more information, please contact UNC Health Corporate and Community Relations
Community Health Need Assessment
A Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA) provides information that helps to identify factors affecting our county, determine resources needed to address these factors and develop a plan of action to address community needs.
Performed every three to four years, through a collaborative process between Health and Human Services, local hospitals, and other non-profit, government, education, faith-based, and business organizations, the CHNA is a systematic, data-driven approach to determining the health status, behaviors and needs of the county’s residents.
The CHNA serves as a goal tool that will assist in achieving three basic goals:
- To improve resident’s health status, increase their life spans, and elevate their overall quality of life. A healthy community is not only one where residents suffer little from physical and mental illness, but also on where residents enjoy a high quality of life.
- To reduce the health disparities among residents. By gathering demographic information along with health status and behavior data, it’s possible to identify population segments that are most at-risk for various diseases and injuries. Intervention plans aimed at targeting these individuals may then be developed to combat some of the socio-economic factors which have historically had a negative impact on resident’s health.
- To increase accessibility to preventative services for all community residents. More accessible preventive services will prove beneficial in accomplishing the first goal (improving health status, increasing life spans, and elevating the quality of life), as well as lowering the cost associated with caring for late-stage diseases resulting from a lack of preventive care.
Information collected from the CHNA will help guide UNC Health efforts to structure programs and services with the goal of improving the community’s overall health and wellness, while balancing UNC Health’s strategic priorities.
Community Health Needs Assessments
