Dr. Michael Jerrett appointed inaugural holder of Jonathan Fielding Chair in Climate Change and Public Health

The Jonathan Fielding Chair in Climate Change and Public Health —­ the first endowed chair at UCLA with climate change in its title — has been established at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health through a generous donation by Dr. Jonathan and Karin Fielding. Dr. Jonathan Fielding is a distinguished professor-in-residence at the school and a national public health leader who served as Los Angeles County’s public health director and health officer for 16 years. Karin Fielding is a communications expert and her husband’s philanthropic partner in efforts to reduce the health impacts of climate change.

Endowed chairs represent the highest honor a university accords to scholarship, reserved for those who have reached the pinnacle of academic achievement. They empower institutions to drive groundbreaking research; attract and retain top-tier faculty; and address the most pressing global challenges. In turn, this helps to draw top students and extends the school’s impact across the UCLA campus, Los Angeles, and around the world in conjunction with UCLA Fielding’s community partners and research collaborators.

Dr. Michael Jerrett, professor in UCLA Fielding’s Department of Environmental Health Sciences and an internationally recognized expert on the health effects of climate change, has been appointed the inaugural holder of the endowed chair, which is awarded to an outstanding UCLA Fielding faculty member whose work contributes significantly to addressing climate change and its impact on public health in the U.S. and/or globally. Over the course of a five-year term, the endowment also supports student researchers, travel, and other related expenses as determined by the chair holder.

Fielding is the founder and co-director, with Jerrett, of the UCLA Center for Healthy Climate Solutions (C-Solutions), based in the school. C-Solutions collaborates with public officials and community partners to advance evidence-based strategies that strengthen communities’ ability to adapt to climate change’s harmful health impacts, with an emphasis on the vulnerable populations that disproportionately experience these effects. Dr. Katherine McNamara assumed the position of C-Solutions executive director in January 2024.

McNamara, who received a PhD in Environmental Health Sciences from UCLA Fielding in 2018, brings more than two decades of experience working across academic, governmental and private sectors. In addition to partnering with center colleagues to broaden and increase the impact of C-Solutions’ activities in climate research, and advancing policy, education, and engagement, McNamara is currently investigating occupational heat fatalities among low-wage workers, as well as evaluating interventions to improve climate change resilience in urban communities.

“Climate change is an existential threat to the sustainability of our planet, and it is essential that we prioritize it if we want to ensure a healthy future for our children and grandchildren,” Fielding said. “Rather than lamenting what hasn’t been done or what could be done, we must support public health leaders who can help our elected representatives understand that we have many opportunities for impact, and point the way toward the best solutions. Michael Jerrett is one of those leaders — not only a distinguished researcher and teacher, but someone with vision, broad knowledge of the issues, a focus on making an immediate difference, and the ability to effectively communicate priorities and solutions to the people in a position to implement them. I am thrilled that he has been appointed as the inaugural holder of this chair.”

Dr. Ron Brookmeyer, dean of UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, said the endowed chair will greatly bolster the school’s ability to address one of its top priorities. “The Jonathan Fielding Chair in Climate Change and Public Health further cements our position as a focal point of efforts to elucidate the health effects of climate change and advance strategies for adapting to its harmful consequences while slowing its impacts,” he said. “This visionary investment is emblematic of the decades-long leadership of Jonathan Fielding on the most important public health threats of our time, and will provide immeasurable support to the first holder of this prestigious chair, Michael Jerrett.”

Jerrett explained that funding from the endowed chair will support pilot studies by students that will better position his research group to apply for large federal grants, as well as funding the work of individuals who will help to prepare competitive grant applications. “I am honored to have been appointed to this prestigious chair, especially since it bears the name of Dr. Jonathan Fielding, one of our nation’s most important public health leaders,” he said.

Over the course of his career, Jerrett has used geographic information science and spatial epidemiology to characterize the harmful environmental exposures affecting different populations, and to estimate the health benefits of strategies that address them. Since 2014, he has earned the distinction of being among the top 1% most-cited environmental/ecology or “cross-field” researchers by his peers. Jerrett has published influential studies on the mental and physical health benefits of urban parks and other green spaces — including their impact not only in cooling cities, but also in promoting increased physical activity, reduced obesity levels, improved educational achievement, and better mental health. With “green infrastructure” becoming a critical component of public health efforts to help urban populations adapt to climate change, this research has taken on even greater resonance.

More recently, Jerrett’s work has focused on the health effects of wildfire smoke and extreme heat — two climate change-related areas of particular concern in California. His group found that approximately 52,000 deaths in the state were attributable to wildfire smoke from 2008 to 2018, at an estimated cost of $432 billion in lost productivity — a compelling argument for greater investments in preventive measures such as improved forest management and reduced land-use developments at the wildland/urban interface.

Jerrett has noted that although hurricanes and other natural disasters tend to capture more public attention, extreme heat is the largest weather-related health threat in the U.S. He is part of a C-Solutions group led by Dr. David Eisenman, UCLA Fielding professor of community health sciences, that was recently awarded a contract by the state’s Office of Environmental Health Hazards Protection to develop an extreme heat warning system for California. “It’s critical that we better understand who will be most affected and provide public health planners what they need to target resources to particularly vulnerable communities,” Jerrett said.

Jerrett and his colleagues have also studied the health effects of so-called climate-forcing pollutants beyond CO2, the most significant greenhouse gas, including tropospheric ozone and black carbon. Jerrett is currently part of a multidisciplinary team (including UCLA Fielding faculty members Dr. Beate Ritz and Dr. Yifang Zhu as well as Dr. Suzanne Paulson of the UCLA Department of Atmospheric and Ocean Sciences) aiming to better characterize and determine potential health effects from the toxic particles emitted by the brake pads and tires of electric vehicles. Jerrett also heads a UCLA team that received a five-year, $421 million grant from the L.A. County Department of Public Health to study the health consequences of the 2015-16 Aliso Canyon gas leak disaster — another example of the importance of understanding potential adverse health impacts associated with the transition to cleaner energy.

“California is an international leader in climate change mitigation and adaptation policies, which gives us many opportunities to study the effects of these mandates,” Jerrett said. “At the same time, given both the geography and the topography, it’s a state that is experiencing some of the worst effects of climate change, whether it’s extreme heat, excessive wildfire smoke, or challenges related to extreme precipitation and the exacerbation of infections endemic to the dry soil, such as valley fever. This combination makes it an ideal setting for this research. And within California, UCLA Fielding — located in a huge and diverse megalopolis with multiple climate regions; on a campus with an incredible breadth of experts who collaborate across disciplines; and in a school with so many outstanding researchers and a center actively engaged in synthesizing the best evidence to affect public health in a positive way — is the place to be.”

Fielding said he hopes the endowed chair will inspire others to make similar investments in support of the public health priorities that are important to them. “Endowing a chair makes a lasting impact, supporting a faculty member in perpetuity,” he noted. “It helps with recruitment and research opportunities, and when you have someone who signs their correspondence with the chair name, that speaks volumes about the institutional commitment to this issue.”

To learn more about establishing an endowed chair at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, please contact Jennifer Powers, assistant dean for development and alumni affairs, at jpowers@support.ucla.edu or (310) 794-0447.