Appointment of A. Eugene Washington as Dean of the David Geffen School of Medicine and Vice Chancellor of Health Sciences at UCLA

UCLA Office of the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost

Administrative Officers, Deans, Department Chairs, Directors, Vice Chancellors, Medical School and Medical Sciences Faculty
 

Dear Colleagues:

I am very pleased to inform you that Chancellor Block and I have proposed for UC Regents’ approval the appointment of A. Eugene Washington as dean of the David Geffen School of Medicine and vice chancellor of health sciences at UCLA, effective February 1, 2010.

Dr. Washington currently serves as executive vice chancellor & provost and professor of gynecology, epidemiology, and health policy at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).  A member of the UCSF faculty since 1983, Dr. Washington served as chair of the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences from 1996 to 2004 and director of the UCSF Women’s Reproductive Health Research Career Development Center from 1998 to 2004.  He co-founded UCSF’s Medical Effectiveness Research Center for Diverse Populations in 1993 and served as director through July 2005.  He also co-founded the UCSF-Stanford Evidence-based Practice Center and served as its first director from 1997 to 2002.  Prior to joining the faculty at UCSF, Dr. Washington worked for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the U.S. Public Health Service.

A respected clinical investigator and health policy analyst, Dr. Washington has been actively engaged in the training of medical students, residents, fellows and junior faculty at UCSF.  He has published extensively in his major areas of research, which include prenatal genetic testing, cervical cancer screening and prevention, non-cancerous uterine conditions management, quality of health care, and racial/ethnic disparities in health outcomes.  Over the last two decades, Dr. Washington has been a national leader in assessing medical technologies, developing clinical practice guidelines and establishing disease prevention policies, particularly for women’s health.

Dr. Washington was elected to the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academy of Sciences in 1997.  He also received the Outstanding Service Medal from the U.S. Public Health Service and has been recognized by his peers and staff at UCSF.  In 1999, he was named the UCSF School of Medicine Alumnus of the Year, the highest honor awarded by the Alumni-Faculty Association, and in 2002, he received UCSF’s Martin Luther King Jr. Award, in recognition of extraordinary efforts to promote diversity on the campus.  During the past 30 years, he has served on a number of professional and governmental boards and committees, and is currently a member of the Board of Trustees of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the boards of directors for The California Wellness Foundation, Common Sense Media, and the California HealthCare Foundation.  He also serves on the Governing Council of the IOM and as a member of the congressionally mandated Scientific Management Review Board for the National Institutes of Health.

Dr. Washington holds an M.D. from the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine, an M.Sc. from the Harvard University School of Public Health, an M.P.H. from the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health, and a B.S. from Howard University.  He completed residencies in preventive medicine at Harvard University and in gynecology and obstetrics at Stanford University, and was a health policy scholar at UCSF’s Institute for Health Policy Studies.

Chancellor Block and I want to express our sincere appreciation to the search/advisory committee and consultant, who brought enormous expertise, sensitivity and responsibility to the search and who recruited a truly outstanding pool of candidates for this position.  Members included: Sherin U. Devaskar – Professor and Vice Chair, Pediatrics; James S. Economou – Professor of Surgery; Jose J. Escarce – Professor of Medicine, UCLA and Senior Natural Scientist, RAND Corporation; David T. Feinberg – CEO and Associate Vice Chancellor, UCLA Hospital System; Judith C. Gasson – Director, Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center; Langston T. Holly – Ruth & Raymond Stotter Chair in Neurosurgery; Patricia A. Kapur – Professor and Ronald L. Katz M.D. Chair, Department of Anesthesiology; Linda M. Liau – Professor of Neurosurgery and Director, Comprehensive Brain Tumor Program; Courtney H. Lyder – Dean, School of Nursing; Jeffery F. Miller – Chair, Department of Microbiology, Immunology & Molecular Genetics; Judy D. Olian – Dean and John E. Anderson Chair in Management, UCLA Anderson School of Management; No-Hee Park – Dean, School of Dentistry; David L. Rimoin – Director, Medical Genetics Institute, Cedars-Sinai and Professor of Pediatrics, Medicine and Human Genetics, UCLA; Linda Rosenstock – Dean, School of Public Health; Richard Sherman – CEO, The David Geffen Company; LuAnn Wilkerson – Senior Associate Dean, Medical Education; Phillip L. Williams – Vice Chairman Emeritus, Times-Mirror Company and Chairman, School of Medicine Board of Visitors. The executive search firm, Witt/Kieffer, was represented by Mary Elizabeth Taylor.

We also want to express our deepest gratitude to Jerry Levey for more than 15 years of extraordinary service as dean and vice chancellor.

I am confident that the UCLA health sciences will continue to thrive under Dr. Washington’s capable leadership.  Please join me in welcoming him to our campus and into this new post.

Sincerely,

Scott L. Waugh
Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost