Kari Nadeau began her tenure as dean of the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health on July 1.

News senior staffer Shaun Thomas sat down with Nadeau to discuss her transition into the role and her vision for the school’s future. Nadeau said she plans to use her background in environmental health and medicine to help build public trust in public health systems, address federal research funding challenges and offer more student scholarships.

Nadeau previously served as chair of the department of environmental health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and held faculty roles at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

Daily Bruin: Now that you’ve officially started as dean, what has stood out to you the most about the School of Public Health?

Kari Nadeau: What has stood out the most is how much the faculty really care about students and that UCLA takes such a high priority with teaching and to make sure that students feel welcomed and protected and safe. As a dean, I’m going to continue to promote that.

Our School of Public Health does a lot of teaching and cares about students. We did a lot of mentoring, too, and so we have an undergraduate program, we have a master’s program, we have graduate degrees. We do a lot of mentoring of high school students. That was my first day – I got to meet all these high school students.

DB: How were your first few days in your new role?

KN: Really busy. Right off the bat, I’m trying to learn and get together with people, especially staff and students and faculty. I’m already trying to garner resources for tuition for students and to help with gift funds. I want to make sure that everyone has the potential to get an education at UCLA. I want to make sure that we help with scholarships and student tuitions.

DB: What are some of your top priorities for this coming year?

KN: First, to create opportunities for students for career paths and to be able to get scholarships. I also want to make sure that we have a voice in public health and make sure that we communicate well and that we stand up to misinformation.

I’m very committed to inclusive excellence. So really, creating pathways for students as well as faculty, being able to link with the community – especially the community of LA – building community by enhancing funds, and then finally making sure that we speak with one voice about public health, and that we can really establish ways for inclusive excellence to be prioritized.

DB: UCLA and other research universities have faced uncertainty around federal research funding over the past year. Given your focus on expanding research support, how do you plan to help Fielding secure funding and continue supporting faculty, students and research opportunities?

KN: As a student, I was able to get scholarships to go to college and to graduate school. I’m committed and will work with wonderful foundations and funders to help continue to fund UCLA and UCLA Fielding. The chancellor is very supportive to be able to think creatively about how to diversify funds, as well as working with wonderful alumni and donors, and we’re doing a capital campaign at UCLA.

That’s so important – for us to keep focused on and to help the community make sure that people have opportunities for an education in an equal, democratized way. That compels me even more to make sure we garner resources, and with those resources, make sure we’re doing interdisciplinary research – plant seed grants for our communities that need it. Those are resources and relationships I want to make sure that I build.

DB: You mentioned diversifying funding through cross-sector partnerships. What might those collaborations look like in practice, and how could they support Fielding?

KN: We need to work hand in hand with welcoming people across different sectors, like the LA County Public Health department, the mayor’s office, WHO (World Health Organization), the United Nations, our California government. I’ve already reached out to all those constituencies. We also have a community advisory board that I’m working with.

I want to make sure that I can follow through on the hope and promise of delivering public health to the public as a leader, and then also to help students get careers in public health.

DB: You’ve worked across medicine, public health, environmental health and policy. How do you think your interdisciplinary background will shape the way you lead Fielding?

KN: I’m excited to put it to use. I was so honored and delighted to be able to be offered this job, and I could see all the interconnectivity and dream big and dream boldly.

What I have been really excited about is working at the chancellor’s office. The chancellor also has a strategic plan, and one of the main items was to connect with the community, help students, help education research and impact at UCLA and also connect schools more with the public health school. Public health really is intertwined with so many of those other schools, like public health law, business and public health, engineering and public health, education, medicine.

I am so excited about all of these aspects of UCLA and how we can interact. Chancellor Frenk said it well: UCLA is one integrated community, and we can enhance it.

DB: What longer-term vision do you have for the Fielding School over the next five to 10 years?

KN: The ability to sustain faculty, grow the school, get more students involved in public health and create careers for them. Then finally, as we move forward, get more resources for everyone. We’ve already done so many great things, like the restaurant grading, like the heat index scoring, like prevention in terms of health.

I want to make sure that over the next many years that our society knows what a special place the UCLA Fielding School is not just to UCLA, but also to the world.

DB: How do you plan to strengthen Fielding’s partnerships with Los Angeles communities and cross-sector partners?

KN: We’re going to have direct and more direct community engagement for students, for faculty, because it’s bidirectional. We want to get information from the community. We can learn a lot from them, and there’s so many communities. LA is the cultural capital of the world.

In terms of other communities like business, I’ve already spoken to our research professors. There’s a lot of excitement around how industry can connect with public health and how we can move it forward, especially AI. We really have to get ahead of that and be responsible. With AI, there’s obviously energy consumption and other things that we need to worry about, but it is here. So working with the industry of AI, working with industries like pharma, working with industries related to engineering and monitoring, our school can do that. Public health is still seen as an absolute critical component to protect people’s health and prevent health.

DB: What role do you see Fielding playing in shaping public health policy?

KN: How do we make sure that we include everyone and that no one is left behind in any policy change? That’s important as we think about the future of UCLA policy in terms of public health and helping policy with policy around education in public health, around vaccinations in California, around clean air in California.

For example, we put a policy together in this central California government once we knew that filters could help students and prevent their asthma. If we put filters in schoolrooms to reduce air pollution, we were able to get filters approved by health insurance, and that was given freely by California for all low and middle-income families. Once a public health school shows through their research that a filter in a specific place helps reduce pollution and helps improve health, that’s when we can go to policymakers and say this is worth it.

That’s just one example, but there are so many that we were able to take that to California legislatures and change policy for the good.

DB: What do you want UCLA students, including students outside of the Fielding School, to understand about public health?

KN: I mentioned some of the reasons why public health is so critical to life and to our lifespan. I want to make sure that students and UCLA staff as well as faculty know how critical public health is from dawn to dusk, because so much of public health policy is part of our individual lives. I also want them to know that we’re accessible.

Part of being public health scholars and public health researchers and educators is that we want to help the public at UCLA, too, so please come by. We welcome everyone into the building. I hope people know that we care about them and care about UCLA. We want to be of service to people at UCLA, as well as the nation and the world.