Good afternoon!
Thank you, Dean Brookmeyer, for that introduction — and for leading the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health with steady stewardship for more than seven years. On your final commencement as dean, I hope you look back with pride at your tenure: a time when the school’s growing reputation reflected its deepening impact, both globally and locally. Your leadership made the difference, and we look forward to your returning to the faculty and continuing your contributions to public health and UCLA through mentoring and scholarship.
Now, before we begin, I would like to recognize the distinguished faculty and staff who have joined us. Through your teaching and mentoring, you have shaped the future of our graduates — a living investment that will only continue to grow and flourish.
And to the families, friends and loved ones who are here today: Thank you. Your encouragement and support have made this moment possible.
Now, most importantly, our graduates. Congratulations! Today is about you. It is a day to celebrate your hard work, perseverance and, most of all, your commitment. By devoting your professional life to public health, you have chosen to improve the well-being of others. You have chosen to look beyond yourself. And you have chosen to care about your community.
This commitment is what I would like to talk about today. When you first stepped foot on campus, you brought your own experiences, motivations and aspirations with you. This diversity of backgrounds is one of the UCLA Fielding School’s strengths — because public health begins with understanding people.
This field requires us to listen across differences, learn from one another and recognize our shared humanity. Every one of you has a personal story that brought you here today. Perhaps you witnessed health inequities in your home country or in a nearby neighborhood. Perhaps you cared for a grandparent navigating illness. Perhaps you, yourself, experienced deprivation, an unhealthy environment or obstacles to the care you needed.
You are here because you want to be part of the solution. Every one of your stories is different, but they all share a common core: a commitment to the health of others. Once you choose to care, the question becomes, how do you carry out that commitment?
Many years ago, I asked myself the same question. When I was sixteen, I spent a summer in a remote indigenous community in the state of Chiapas in southern Mexico. I was trying to decide whether to study medicine, like three generations of Frenks before me, or anthropology. One day, while I was sitting in a health post, a poor woman came in, carrying her grandson in her arms. It was very cold — we were way up in the mountains — and she had walked more than three hours to get this sick child to the town’s clinic. Along the way, she had fallen and injured her head. By the time she arrived, she was covered in blood. Her grandson was sick, and she needed care, herself. But there was no one there to assist her. The health worker was absent, and the anthropologist I was observing could do little to help. Neither could I.
What struck me was not only the suffering before me, but the absence behind it — the absence of a system that could have prevented such suffering, or responded to it in time. That woman needed more than a doctor. She needed a whole health system. In that moment, my desire to care became inseparable from my responsibility to act. That realization led me first to medicine and ultimately to public health — which, as I often say, is like medicine, except society is your patient.
Public health teaches us to widen our field of vision; to look beyond individuals and to understand the broader forces that shape health. Health is not just a product of nature and biology. It is shaped by nurture through education, housing, employment, the environment, public policy and even our social connections. The field of public health demands that we connect these dimensions and tackle health at scale, a perspective that has never been more important than it is today.
You are graduating into a world of great complexity, with major issues that transcend the borders between nations and professional disciplines. There is no shortage of unsolved challenges crying out for solutions based on evidence: infectious diseases like Ebola and measles, the rise of noncommunicable diseases across the world, the crisis of mental illness and substance abuse, and the continuing constraints on health care access and affordability.
But I have hope. I am fundamentally optimistic about the future of health because of what I see in this building today. You recognize the power of public health, and today, you stand on the verge of taking this power into the world. It is work that most of you will pursue with determination and from which you will derive a sense of purpose. You might stop a viral outbreak before it happens, or prevent disease by ensuring communities have clean water. You might design media campaigns against smoking, or improve systems in busy hospitals to prevent infections. Or you might analyze data that drives changes in policy, or bring health services to people like the grandmother I met long ago in Chiapas.
Whatever you decide to pursue, communities will be healthier because of your commitment. Finally, I want to share a few words I hope you carry with you throughout your lives. Public health depends on data, evidence and scientific rigor, but it also depends on trust. And trust grows through connection, listening and a heartfelt promise to treat every person with dignity.
There is one common thread that weaves throughout this mindset, and that is kindness. In a world that wants to pull us apart, kindness ties us together and reminds us that we are more alike than we might think. As the years pass by, hold on to your kindness. Hold on to your courage. And hold on to your commitment to care.
UCLA will always be part of you, and you will always be part of UCLA. And remember: We are One UCLA.