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About The School

  • Founded: 1961
  • Dean Jody Heymann, MD, PhD
  • Students: 647 (409 masters and 238 doctoral), from 35+ nations
  • Faculty: 252, 85 full-time
  • Research: Ongoing throughout the U.S. and the world
  • Total Budget: $62.9 million
  • Alumni: 9,280

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    Over the last 50 years UCLA School of Public Health Research...

    Identifies the biological markers that may predict diabetes in healthy people.

    Finds that pesticide exposure increases the risk of Parkinson's disease.

    Three members of the School's faculty have served terms as president of the American Public Health Association: Lester Breslow, Ruth Roemer, and E. Richard Brown.

    Playing leadership roles in California's successful campaign against tobacco use, faculty is instrumental in determining the allocation of Proposition 99 funds from the tax on cigarettes for tobacco control to researchers, local health departments, schools, community health agencies, and the media.

    Conducts critical research on the exposures to and adverse health effects of major environmental toxic chemicals including diesel exhaust, MTBE, lead, arsenic, chromium, cadmium and pesticides. Faculty also play important roles in translating scientific research findings into policy for protecting workers and the public from these and other toxic chemicals.

    Shows that people living or working near major freeways are exposed to 30 times the concentration of dangerous particles from motor vehicles.

    Documents the nature and extent of the problem of people lacking health insurance in California and becomes active in helping formulate policy options at the national, state, and local levels for dealing with the issue.

    Demonstrates that discrimination is associated with health status

    Establishes the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study of men-who-have-sex-with men in collaboration with Hopkins, Northwestern and Pittsburg Universities that have published over 1200 papers over the last 27 years on the epidemiologic, immunologic,behavioral, clinical and treatment aspects of HIV/AIDS.

    Conducts research regarding use of fruit and vegetable vouchers among low-income pregnant women that leads the U.S. Department of Agriculture to revise W.I.C. to include monthly subsidies for fruits and vegetables.

    "Health Status of the American Male," establishes, among other findings, the safety of vasectomy as an effective birth-control procedure.

    Establishes that association between television viewing and childhood obesity is directly related to children's exposure to junk food commercials.

    Finds SARS death rates double in cities with poor air quality.

    Demonstrates early in the AIDS epidemic, how HIV-related immune deficiency is transmitted among homosexual men, a discovery that has prevented millions of infections. UCLA School of Public Health faculty go on to lead international efforts to control the spread of the disease, particularly in China, Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar, and other areas of Southeast Asia.

    Trains over 100 health professionals from China, Southeast Asia, and India under the UCLA/Fogarty Program at the M.S. and Ph.D. levels who have become Ministers of health and other leaders in HIV/AIDS and public health  in Asia and forms a network of UCLA alumni who continue to collaborate with investigators from the Schools of Public Health, medicine and Behavioral Sciences.

    Celebrates School's 50 years as an independent entity. A dozen centers sponsored by or associated with the School promote interdisciplinary research among faculty and students: Center for Adolescent Health Promotion, Center for Environmental Genomics, Center for Global and Immigrant Health, Center for Health Policy Research, Center for Healthier Children, Families, and Communities, Center for Human Nutrition, Center for Metabolic Diseases Prevention, Center for Occupational and Environmental Health, Center for Public Health and Disasters, Division of Cancer Prevention & Control Center Research (DCPCR), Fred H. Bixby Center for Population and Reproductive Health, UCLA Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Equity.

    Shows a genetic susceptibility to multiple sclerosis, and determine that individuals who develop MS are more likely to have childhood virus infections after the age of 10, at which time the immune system has undergone changes associated with puberty and adolescence.

    Establishes The California Health Interview Survey, the largest state health survey in the United States and the first in California to interview people from every county, as a collaboration involving the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research (based in the School), the California Department of Health Services, and the Public Health Institute.

    Conducts the first study to establish that chronic exposure to oxidant and primary pollutants found in Los Angeles leads to reduced pulmonary function in children and adults providing evidence-based data supporting stricter anti-pollution regulations.

    Pioneers the study of violence as a public health issue in the United States - not solely as a criminal-justice issue.

    In one of the first studies examining the impact of surgical treatment for breast cancer on quality of life, finds that women who have had a mastectomy vs. breast conservation surgery (lumpectomy) recover at the same rate but express more difficulties with body image.

    Fifteen among the School's faculty have been elected members of the Institute of Medicine: Ron Andersen, Lester Breslow, Robert Brook, Ron Brookmeyer, Thomas Coates, Jared Diamond, Jonathan Fielding, Patti Ganz, Lillian Gelberg, Gail Harrison, Bob Kaplan, Emmett Keeler, Jeanne Miranda, Tom Rice, Linda Rosenstock, Ken Wells.

    Leads efforts to promote the benefits of breastfeeding on a global scale and instrumental in developing the International Code of Marketing of Breast Milk Substitutes and the subsequent World Health Organization resolution, Wellstart - an international breastfeeding training program for health professionals - along with the Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative and the World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action.

    The Oxford Textbook of Public Health (editions 1-5), the definitive book on global public health, is edited by Roger Detels.

    Faculty shows that chronic exposure to air pollutants is associated with compromised growth of respiratory capacity in children, and with irreversible changes in lung function in adults.

    Establishes a link between traffic related air pollution and preterm births, low birth weight, pre-eclampsia and cardiac birth defects.

    Challenges the presumption that an only child grows up feeling isolated. Rather, only children are found to have a clear social advantage - deflating notions that they are more isolated, less involved in extracurricular activities, and less liked.

    UCLA faculty is instrumental in achieving international tobacco control agreements.

    Demonstrates that the level of cholesterol in normal diets, including diets containing eggs, does not raise serum cholesterol.

    Following the Watts riots in 1965, documents the need for construction of a hospital to serve the people of South-Central Los Angeles. The hospital becomes King-Drew Medical Center.

    Presents evidence that green tea helps to prevent chronic gastritis.

    Documents the health benefits and cost savings of helmet use among motorcycle riders.