The UCLA School of Public Health has received a $50 million gift from public health leader Dr. Jonathan Fielding, Karin Fielding and family. The gift is the largest in the school’s 50-year history. The UCLA School of Public Health will be renamed the UCLA Jonathan and Karin Fielding School of Public Health, in recognition of the donors.
Dr. Fielding, a former UCLA faculty member, is a founding member of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force and chair of the U.S. Community Preventive Services Task Force. He is the former chair of the Partnership for Prevention and the U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary’s Advisory Committee on the 2020 Health Objectives for the Nation. In 2010, Dr. Fielding was appointed by President Barack Obama to the Advisory Group on Prevention, Health Promotion, and Integrative and Public Health. Karin Fielding is an officer of The Everychild Foundation, whose mission is to ease the suffering of children in the greater Los Angeles area, whether due to disease, disability, abuse, neglect or poverty. She also serves as a court-appointed special advocate, working with children in foster care, in court and in the community.
The Fielding gift will equally support faculty, students and educational infrastructure. It will endow a chair in population health, which will advocate work to improve health through non-health sectors, such as transportation, housing and education. The fund will also assist UCLA to regularly evaluate programs to ensure that UCLA School of Public Health students graduate with the essential skills to be leaders in the field of public health.
The UCLA School of Public Health has a number of major research programs including the Center for Global Infectious Diseases, Center for Public Health and Disasters, and the Center for Environmental Genomics. The school is consistently rated among the top 10 schools of public health in the nation by U.S. News & World Report.