A Vision Rooted in Kindness

This story appears in the UCLA School of Dentistry's spring 2025 magazine. Click here for all magazine content.

When Dr. Julio Frenk stepped onto the UCLA campus as its seventh chancellor in January, he brought with him not just an impressive résumé but a leadership philosophy shaped by empathy, global awareness, and public service.

Chancellor Frenk visited the School of Dentistry on April 4 as part of his campuswide UCLA Connects: Listening Exercise series. During an opening conversation with Dean Paul H. Krebsbach, he recalled choosing public health over medicine after college. “So you’re not going to see patients?” a classmate asked.

His response more than 35 years ago embodies the personal north star that has taken Dr. Frenk on a journey to academic leadership positions at the University of Miami and Harvard and as an executive with the World Health Organization in Geneva: “No, I am, except that now society is my patient.”

That mindset led him to serve as Mexico’s Secretary of Health in the early 2000s, where he launched Seguro Popular, a national insurance program that brought coverage to over 50 million uninsured people. Importantly, Dr. Frenk’s model prioritized access to oral health, recognizing that dentistry is not a luxury but a vital part of whole-person care.

“When you measure the importance of a health problem by the combination of mortality and disability – the pain it produces, the way it disables people – oral health shoots to the top,” he explained to the audience of trained dental professionals nodding in agreement. “There was already fluoridation of water in Mexico, but very little access to early detection and preventive dental services. That became a core part of the design of Seguro Popular.”

Now, the nation’s top-ranked public university and its diverse constituents comprise the micro-society under Chancellor Frenk’s care … but his big-picture thinking remains.

“We get money from the hard work of taxpayers. Our duty is to make sure that money invested by the people in us – as a public institution – we return with a higher value than what that money could have produced elsewhere.”

Delivering that return on investment is critical as UCLA faces budget cuts, inflation, and aging infrastructure. He has already formed what he calls the Strategy Execution Team (SET), “because strategy and execution are two sides of the same coin.”

To his point above, Chancellor Frenk emphasized during his School of Dentistry Listening Exercise that UCLA needs to create a stronger culture of continuous improvement and efficiency to obtain maximum value for the money it receives. Another goal is leveraging more partnerships with the private sector to develop technologies that not only generate revenue but also provide solutions for humanity while maintaining existing ethical guardrails.

His third proposal caused all ears in the room to perk up.

“The biggest financial engine of the university is UCLA Health,” Chancellor Frenk said. “It has grown from being a campus hospital to the most widely distributed health system in LA County and beyond. I think we need to figure out a way to expand that footprint and also include the School of Dentistry. That will benefit the population that we serve and will generate fresh revenue streams.”

In Chancellor Frenk, UCLA Dentistry finds a leader who views oral health not as an afterthought, but as a
cornerstone of public health. Through his story, the Dental Bruin community is reminded: Compassion and excellence together can transform lives—and institutions.