UNC’s Jo Anne Earp, behavioral scientist and civil rights activist, dies at 79

Dr. Jo Anne L. Earp, 79, professor emerita and past chair in the Department of Health Behavior at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, passed away in the early hours of Nov. 18 at UNC Hospitals in Chapel Hill, NC. 

A beloved and brilliant educator, researcher, wife and mother, she was known as much for her passionate support for generations of students, faculty, family and friends as she was for her high impact research. Jo Anne turned no one away.

Through decades of 80-hour weeks, she connected those who knocked on her door to people, ideas, and resources, pushing them to reach their full potential.

Jo Anne’s 50-year legacy with the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health was profoundly shaped by early years on the front lines of the civil rights movement in Louisiana and Mississippi. Born in Great Neck, NY, in 1943, to Gerald and Jean Lesser, she grew up in a traditional but progressive household that prized education, creativity, and social commitment. 

A bold, creative thinker and doer from a very young age, she earned her undergraduate degree in English from Bryn Mawr (1965), spending her senior year at Newcomb College (now Tulane University) to be able to participate fully as an activist. A defining moment for her came when she publicly confronted Ross Barnett, then governor of Mississippi, for his tacit complicity in the disappearance of her fellow civil rights activists James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman. 

She recalled the terror of being followed closely by a police car afterwards until she and her activist friends crossed the border into another state. These experiences, and her recognition of how social stratification and inequities get reinforced through power structures across generations, would shape her decision later to pursue a ScD in medical sociology (1974) from Johns Hopkins University, School of Public Health.

Before that, however, Jo Anne’s brief first marriage brought the joy of her first son, Nicholas. While raising him, she also completed her doctoral degree in only three-and-a-half years with the critical financial support of a paid traineeship. Her fierce commitment to financial support for students (she gave generously to the UNC Gillings School and other educational causes throughout her life) traces back to this “make or break” period in her own education and how much it meant to her and her son.

While in the final stages of her dissertation, Jo Anne met the absolute love of her life, H. Shelton (Shelley) Earp, MD, now director of UNC Cancer Care and the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center. At the time, Shelley was a young physician who had graduated from UNC School of Medicine, completing his internship at Vanderbilt and serving as a captain in the U.S. Army Corps. 

After a short courtship, the two married in 1974 and moved to Chapel Hill, NC, both joining the University of North Carolina faculty. These golden years also brought their son Matthew, and the family of four thrived in an always busy household of work and play. 

Throughout that time, and across almost 50 years of marriage, Jo Anne and Shelley would be each other’s closest friends and advisors as both pursued research in cancer control and held leadership roles at Carolina. Their intense love and respect for one another radiated to all who knew them, and to be in Jo Anne’s orbit meant that you received the wisdom and advocacy of both. “Jo Anne and Shelley”—the names were often spoken in one breath, as if they were one—and in many ways they were.

At UNC, Jo Anne was among the first women to be appointed as a researcher to the School of Public Health faculty, in what was then called the Department of Health Education. She brought to her research the same fiery passion she had demonstrated on the frontlines of the civil rights movement. In short order, she captured the department’s first National Institutes of Health grant; created and taught the first women’s health class at UNC-Chapel Hill; and developed the department’s first course on social and behavioral research methods. 

Her drive to end racial disparities carried through her career at Carolina, where she co-founded the N.C. Breast Cancer Screening Program in the late 1980s, one of the first large-scale interventions testing the “lay health advisor” approach to promoting and protecting health. 

The program proved that trusted community members could be powerful change agents in their environments, helping to increase mammography screening rates in their communities, thereby reducing cancer deaths, in this case of Black women in rural North Carolina.

A formidable researcher and leader, Jo Anne produced more than 150 peer reviewed publications; co-edited the first textbook on patient advocacy; and served as chair of the Department of Health Behavior for 13 years. Yet, this catalogue of achievements scarcely conveys the depth of her persistence and passion for both rigorous inquiry and for ensuring that students, faculty, staff, friends, and family could access the resources and conditions they needed to thrive. 

Every day brought fresh action to open doors for people in whom she saw a spark. When she saw that spark, she would move every hurdle to help them get what they needed—from housing and food to medical interventions, to scholarships, degrees, jobs, and leadership roles. 

Through it all, she prized the value of the written word, so much so that to be “earped” became its own verb at the Gillings School. As Dean Emerita Barbara K. Rimer put it: “To have been ‘earped’ was to have had one’s papers subjected to her purple pen . . . resulting in leaps of quality.” 

More than a few of her mentees—some of them deans at schools of public health—tell of framed examples of those critiques on their office walls.

“Jo Anne was undoubtedly the most important person in my academic career, thus far. I considered (and affectionally called her) my second mother—her influence was that formative and that instructive,” said Erin Kobetz, vice provost for research and scholarship. associate director for population sciences and cancer disparity at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, and the John K. and Judy H. Schulte Senior Endowed Chair in Cancer Research.

“She taught me some of the most critical life lessons—the necessity of leading with humility, acting with purpose, listening with intent, and giving myself (and others) grace. She shaped me into someone who was resilient, grounded in my strengths and cognizant of my shortcomings,” Kobetz said. 

“She saw my potential long before I did and was appropriately tough when I fell short of it. In moments when I couldn’t find my motivation, she became it. When life gave me lemons, she taught me how to make lemonade and to draw inspiration from it. 

“Her mentorship knew no bounds. She was always there, always able to center me, and always willing to lend me (and her many other mentees) her shoulders to stand upon. It is from that unique vantage point that I could dream and do without self-imposed boundaries, achieving the kind of impact that she very much helped inspire,” Kobetz said.

Her mentoring and support for Carolina led to several important awards, including the Gillings School’s Larsh Award for Mentorship and the UNC General Alumni Association Faculty Service Award.

Jo Anne was so beloved at Carolina and beyond that her 2013 “retirement” party had its own name: “Earpfest.” 

The event drew hundreds of colleagues, former students, and friends from across the U.S. and around the world to celebrate her legacy. Yet her zest for work and life were one, and so she never really retired. She was always pressing on towards the next project, the next goal. 

Time with her meant intense conversations about work and family—and she delighted in sharing about summer trips to the beach with her sons and their spouses and partners, and grandchildren, and of holidays with her brother and sister-in-law. She loved welcoming people to her beautiful home on Hooper Lane, which had for many years been the home of former UNC President Bill Friday and his wife Ida (herself a graduate of Jo Anne’s department in the 1940s). Her wry wit and energy spiced every conversation.

She taught me some of the most critical life lessons—the necessity of leading with humility, acting with purpose, listening with intent, and giving myself (and others) grace. She shaped me into someone who was resilient, grounded in my strengths and cognizant of my shortcomings.

Erin Kobetz

A “force of nature” Jo Anne was called by many. “She was not to be refused,” said others, when she fund-raised for scholarships. Even in the last week of her life, her calendar was crowded with appointments with students, mentees and friends, and she shared with them her excitement at celebrating Thanksgiving with her family, even as she coached them on strategy for achieving the next goal.

Jo Anne’s own words give a flavor of her indomitable force. “Some have said I led by example,” she said in a 2019 speech. “Others have told me that if staying as late at the office, working as hard as I seemed to do, was the example, they weren’t having any of it, thank you very much! What neither group realized was that I only knew one way of doing things: full steam ahead. I lacked a modulating gene! Doggedness I knew; determination I had; and a certain sense of how good other people were or had the potential to be.” 

Advocate, connector, bridge-builder, ally, supporter, cheerleader and networker, Jo Anne Earp gave back to the very end.

Jo Anne is survived by her beloved husband Shelley; sons Nicholas (Krista) and Matthew (Sarah); grandchildren [Nicholas, Tyler, Alexis and Rhye]; brother and sister-in-law Michael and Carol Lesser and nieces Emily and Julia; sister-in-law and brother-in-law Pam Earp Young and Ron Young and niece Laura; and many, many dear friends who have fulfilled their potential in part because of her belief in them. An informal gathering for close friends and family was held at the Ackland Museum in Chapel Hill, and a more formal memorial service will be announced in the future.

In lieu of flowers, donations in memory of Jo Anne may be made in support of The Jo Anne Earp Scholarship Fund in Health Behavior and Health Education or The Jo Anne Earp Distinguished Professorship in Health Behavior at the UNC-Chapel Hill Gillings School of Global Public Health. You may also donate online at go.unc.edu/JEarp.