Julio Frenk is chair of the Center’s External Advisory Board. He is a leading global health researcher who has held positions in government and academia, both in the U.S. and Mexico — became UCLA’s seventh chancellor on January 1, 2025. He is also a distinguished professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management within the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. Before joining UCLA, Frenk served as the president of the University of Miami from 2015 to 2024 and as dean of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health from 2009 to 2015. 

As federal secretary of health of Mexico from 2000 to 2006, he implemented a groundbreaking program that expanded access to healthcare to over 55 million uninsured individuals. Frenk was the founding director-general of Mexico’s National Institute of Public Health and has held senior roles at the World Health Organization and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Chancellor Frenk earned his medical degree from the National University of Mexico, as well as a master of public health and a joint Ph.D. in medical care organization and sociology from the University of Michigan. His career as a global public health researcher includes close to 200 articles in academic journals, as well as many books and book chapters, which have been cited more than 37,000 times. In addition, he has written five novels for children explaining the functions of the human body.