Bill Gentry

Bill Gentry, MPA serves as Professor and Director of the Community Preparedness and Disaster Management (CPDM) Certificate Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Gillings School of Global Public Health. With over 15 years of prior experience at the North Carolina Division of Emergency Management, he bridges academic research and practical disaster response initiatives globally.

• BA in History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2008)
• MPA in Public Administration, North Carolina Central University (2010)

His research centers on integrated disaster management systems, particularly focusing on the intersection of public health preparedness, veterinary/animal emergency response, and the One Health Initiative. Gentry pioneered North Carolina's State Animal Response Team after Hurricane Floyd's devastation, establishing national frameworks for animal disaster management that connect human, animal, and environmental health systems.

His publication trends reveal sustained expertise in operational disaster frameworks, with recent work emphasizing community-level animal emergency management best practices and historical contributions to veterinary responder training systems. Key thematic threads include cross-sector collaboration, hospital chemical warfare preparedness, and international capacity building.

• Ned Brooks Award for Public Service (2014, UNC-CH)
• National Honorary Rescuer Medal (2010, Country of Moldova)
• Certificate of Recognition for Improving School Safety (2010, Orange County Board of Education)

Gentry mentors practitioners through the CPDM program, with alumni like Guy Valente (Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons) implementing his methodologies internationally. His grant work focuses on international disaster preparedness capacity building, including Turkey's HOSPREP 2018 workshop for 19 nations on chemical weapons hospital response planning. Current projects involve Moldova/Botswana partnership coordination under the Partnership for Peace Program.

The CPDM program operates as his primary academic hub, maintaining linkages between disaster management education and practice through the One Medicine/One Health initiative with the NC Department of Agriculture and NC State College of Veterinary Medicine. His work drives policy implementation in animal emergency management across 48 U.S. states through NASAAEP frameworks.