California (EL UNIVERSAL).- This Wednesday, Dr. Julio Frenk was named the new chancellor of the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA).
This was announced by the president of the university, Michael V. Drake, after the appointment was approved by the institution’s Board of Regents.
Julio Frenk will take over in January 2025, replacing Provost Gene Block, who announced last year that he wanted to return to teaching and research.
The process that concluded with Frenk’s appointment lasted seven months, during which a series of candidates were evaluated.
Who is Julio Frenk, new rector of UCLA?
Julio Frenk Mora served as rector of the University of Miami since 2015.
He graduated as a surgeon from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). At the University of Michigan he earned three advanced degrees: Master of Public Health, Master of Sociology, and Joint Doctorate in Health Care Organization and Sociology. He belongs to the fourth generation of doctors in his family.
He also has academic appointments as Professor of Public Health Sciences at the Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine, as Professor of Health Public Policy and Management at the Miami Herbert School of Business, as Professor of Sociology in the College of Arts and Sciences and as a professor of Health Studies at the School of Nursing and Health Studies.
Prior to his current position, Dr. Frenk served for nearly seven years as dean of the Harvard University School of Public Health and as the T & G Angelopoulos Professor of Public Health and International Development.
He was a senior researcher at the National Institute of Public Health and professor of the subject of public health at the UNAM Faculty of Medicine. He has been a member of the National System of Researchers. He was a tenured professor at Harvard University and is currently a professor at the University of Miami.
Dr. Frenk was Secretary of Health of Mexico during the six-year term of Vicente Fox, between 2000 and 2006, a period during which the foundations for universal coverage in terms of social protection in health were laid, during which the Federal Health Commission was created. Protection against Health Risks (Cofepris) and Popular Insurance.
Among the main achievements of his career, Dr. Frenk’s role as founding general director of the National Institute of Public Health of Mexico stands out. Additionally, he has held management positions at the World Health Organization, the Mexican Health Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the CARSO Health Institute.
He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine of Mexico, of the National Academy of Medicine of the United States, of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of El Colegio Nacional. He serves on the boards of the United Nations Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and chairs the board of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.
He received Honoris Causa degrees from 11 universities in Mexico, the United States, Canada and Europe. Additionally, he was awarded the Clinton Global Citizen Award for changing “the way service providers and decision makers around the world think about health,” the Bouchet Leadership Medal presented by Yale University for promoting diversity in graduate education and the Welch-Rose Award from the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health.
