L.A. City Official Gives $50-Million for Public Health

How much: A $50-million pledge

Who gave it: Jonathan and Karin Fielding, along with their sons, Andrew and Preston. Dr. Fielding is director of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.

Who got it: The University of California at Los Angeles School of Public Health, which will be renamed after the Fieldings.

Donors’ relationship to the university: Dr. Fielding has been a faculty member since 1979. He is a professor of health services and pediatrics and co-director of the UCLA Center for Healthier Children, Families, and Communities. The gift will come from the Fieldings’ investments.

What the gift will support: The gift was largely unrestricted, Dr. Fielding says, but it will support financial aid for students and faculty recruitment, including endowing a professorship that will focus on ways to improve health through housing, transportation, and other areas.

Why they gave: “My wife and I agreed that the highest calling was to contribute to a great public university that’s having fiscal problems, that really is becoming increasingly dependent, as many public institutions are, on private contributions,” Dr. Fielding says. “For us, this is a once in a lifetime gift.”

What they hope the gift will accomplish: Bring attention to public health. “Most people give to medical schools where they’ve been personally affected by treatment and it’s a little harder to find people that’ll give money to schools that help prevent problems that you never see,” Dr. Fielding says. “I was told early on by a mentor, ‘There are no gold stars for prevention.’ So the rewards have to be internal rather than external.”

For details about other new gifts, including $50-million to University Hospitals, in Cleveland, go to philanthropy.com/topdonors. Send gift news to gifts@philanthropy.com.