UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health faculty shared their thoughts on Chancellor Julio Frenk’s public health impact.

Before becoming UCLA’s seventh chancellor Jan. 2, Frenk was Mexico’s secretary of health and dean of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He is now also a distinguished professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at UCLA.

[Related: From public health policy to higher education: Julio Frenk becomes UCLA chancellor]

Fred Zimmerman, a professor of health policy and management, said he was delighted when he first heard about Frenk’s appointment.

“I think that we will certainly benefit from being associated with such a titan of the field,” he said. “So in that sense, prestige, visibility – that’s going to help us enormously.”

Zimmerman added that Frenk’s career record suggests he will be a chancellor who is both an intellectual and supportive leader for the community.

“He’s the kind of person who will be able to take the blame when things don’t go right – try and fix problems – but also when things do go well, give that credit to other people and celebrate other people’s accomplishments,” Zimmerman said.

Frenk began as a public health researcher and was appointed as the World Health Organization’s executive director of Evidence and Information for Policy in 1998.

During his time as Mexico’s secretary of health from 2000 to 2006, Frenk led efforts to implement a program that expanded universal health insurance, improving access to health care for 55 million people. The program decreased the percentage of people without health insurance by 40%, said Susan Parker, a professor in the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland.

Frenk also helped increase access to birth control during his tenure by allowing morning-after pill distribution in government health clinics, according to 2015 reporting from Reuters.

Tobacco control was another area of public health that Frenk’s tenure addressed. According to the Pan American Health Organization, Mexico ratified the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in 2004 – the first Latin American country to do so.

The treaty outlined how countries could reduce tobacco supply and demand, according to the WHO.

Dr. Michael Ong, a professor-in-residence of medicine and health policy and management, said one of these outlines was increasing tobacco taxes.

However, Frenk’s history with tobacco control – despite some successes – is not free from controversy. Ong said Frenk made an arrangement with the tobacco industry to help fund health insurance.

“As somebody who has worked for over 25 years in tobacco control, both in academia and also in public policymaking, that’s something that over the years, we have all seen that the tobacco industry generally subverts any well-intentioned public health effort,” Ong said. “They are not there to help you; they are there to get their interests done, which are basically to addict more people.”

Ong said Mexico was considered a leader in tobacco control, so the decision to sign the arrangement with the tobacco industry was met with criticism. However, as someone who has experienced firsthand the struggles in passing tobacco taxes through legislation, Ong added that he understood the choice Frenk had to make between funding health insurance and doing the “right thing” in tobacco control.

Ong added that he personally would not advocate for working with tobacco companies but believes that working toward the greater good should be the main priority.

“We don’t always agree on strategies – even in the tobacco control world – in terms of how to get there,” Ong said. “But I think that if you look at the totality of what Chancellor Frenk did when he was minister of health in Mexico, he did tremendously.”

Ninez Ponce, professor and chair of the health policy and management department, said she was thrilled when she learned of Frenk’s appointment because of his previous work promoting health equity.

Ponce said she hopes Frenk can provide seminars or lectures at the School of Public Health. She added that she hopes Frenk can also motivate UCLA’s researchers and students to contribute more on a global stage.

Epidemiology professor Liwei Chen also said Frenk’s experience could promote UCLA’s research by fostering collaborations with other universities across the globe.

In addition to being an academic discipline, public health holds a responsibility to local communities, Zimmerman said. Frenk’s background in public health will align well with his new leadership role, he added.

Public health is also a diverse and interdisciplinary field, Zimmerman said, with faculty coming from backgrounds ranging from economics to chemistry. He added that Frenk’s background in public health would allow him to carry out the leadership role with an innate understanding of many subjects.

As Frenk transitions into the leadership role, however, there are issues that faculty members hope he can address.

With the recent reelection of President Donald Trump, Chen said the National Institutes of Health may cut funding, making research activities more challenging. Chen said she hopes Frenk can use his network to identify and secure new funding sources for research.

Ong said the federal change also introduces unpredictability, such as finding access to public health datasets after the removal of some Centers for Disease Control and Prevention websites.

“I think that it’s a very different time, and it’s going to need to take a lot of navigation because the University of California is not separate from the federal government,” Ong said.

Zimmerman, in reference to the Los Angeles County fires, said he also believes Frenk’s successful career in government service will be useful during times of uncertainty.

“It’d be nice if we get one quarter where there’s no major crisis,” he said. “He’s coming into a very challenging, difficult and chaotic environment.”

Ponce said that from a public health perspective, she was impressed by how UCLA donated space in the recently acquired UCLA Research Park to serve as a disaster recovery center for those impacted by the fires. Frenk personally opened the center Jan. 14, alongside LA Mayor Karen Bass.

“Our world-class faculty and amazing students, we really have a lot to offer – not just for the Los Angeles community, not just for the California community but for many communities, particularly low-resourced communities around the globe,” Ponce said. “I think he would be excited to do that, and he would know how to rise to that challenge.”

Contributing reports by Dylan Winward, News editor.