In memoriam: Dr. Roger Detels

Dr. Roger Detels, distinguished professor of epidemiology in the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health (UCLA Fielding), passed away on July 25, 2026.

Detels’ passing is felt deeply by the UCLA Fielding community due to his incredible professional accomplishments and 56 years of service to the school, but even more so because of his integrity and generosity. Detels was a colleague, friend, and mentor to countless faculty, students, staff, and researchers at UCLA Fielding and around the globe. It is challenging to imagine the school community and field of public health without him, but Detels’ indelible impact on the careers and lives of so many scholars in the United States and abroad will continue for generations to come because of the profound example he set.

Over the course of his illustrious career, Detels conducted research on air pollution, multiple sclerosis and other neurologic diseases, hypertension, and several infectious diseases, including trachoma, capillariasis and Japanese encephalitis. Yet he is perhaps best known for his research on HIV/AIDS, which he began in 1981 when he initiated a natural history study of AIDS in young homosexual men in Los Angeles. In 1983, Detels became the principal investigator of the Los Angeles Center for the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study (MACS), one of the largest natural history studies of HIV/AIDS in the world. MACS contributed some of the earliest evidence of the route of infection and risk activities for HIV transmission, along with the changes in the immune system in response to the virus, and Detels authored a landmark study showing that some men were resistant to HIV infection. Detels continued to head the Los Angeles site of MACS for decades, which has followed 6,972 gay and bisexual men since the dawn of the epidemic.

In 1988, Detels founded the UCLA/Fogarty AIDS International Training and Research Program (UCLA/Fogarty), through which more than 100 public health leaders — from countries including Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore, Myanmar, India, China, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Hungary, and Brazil — received master’s or doctoral degrees from UCLA Fielding, and many more benefited from short-term training over the years. In the early years of the program, Detels often traveled to assist countries including Thailand, Myanmar, the Philippines, and Indonesia in the development of their systems to track the epidemic. Over time, graduates of the UCLA/Fogarty program have included two ministers of health, founders of two public health schools, directors of provincial and metropolitan CDC programs, chief epidemiologist for the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as numerous university professors.

For Detels, his career began with earning a bachelor of arts degree from Harvard University, a doctor of medicine degree from New York University, and completion of his medical residency at the University of Washington in Seattle, where he also earned a master of science degree in preventive medicine. In 1966, he began service as a medical officer for a United States Naval Medical Research Unit in Taiwan and went on to work briefly at the National Institute of Neurological Disease and Stroke, National Institutes of Health, before beginning his tenure at UCLA Fielding in 1970 as an associate professor.

During his more than five decades of service at UCLA Fielding, Detels held many roles beyond his promotions from associate professor to distinguished professor. He served for five years as dean of UCLA Fielding, chair of the school’s Department of Epidemiology for four years, as well as acting head and head of the Division of Epidemiology (before it was a department) for nine years total.

For so many members of UCLA Fielding’s community, Detels was a model for mentorship, training, teaching, and service. He trained and mentored more than 100 doctoral candidates and 300 health professionals from all over the world, and counseled countless additional scholars, formally and informally; he always made time to listen, learn, and help. He received awards for teaching, including the UCLA Academic Senate Committee on Teaching’s Distinguished Teaching Award and the Academic Senate Faculty Research Lectureship Award, as well as numerous recognitions for his scholarship and service including awards from the governments of China, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia.

Detels co-authored more than 500 peer reviewed papers during his career, as well as books including the “Oxford Textbook of Global Public Health” (formerly “Oxford Textbook of Public Health”) for which he co-edited the first two editions and then served as senior editor for the third through seventh editions. He also led and belonged to numerous scholarly societies and professional associations, and served on numerous committees over the years including roles as president of the Society for Epidemiologic Research and president of the International Epidemiological Association. His service included the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Council, the former EPA Science Review Panel, as well as invited testimony to the United States Senate’s Committee on Veterans’ Affairs.

“Dr. Roger Detels was an indefatigable force for good. He understood the power of public health, but led with grace, humility, and humor,” said Dr. Kari Nadeau, dean of the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. “He is already greatly missed, but his legacy will continue unabated in the many public health changemakers he mentored and the many invaluable lessons they will pass on to future generations.”