Harvard Professor Kari Nadeau Appointed Dean of UCLA School of Public Health

Kari C. Nadeau, the chair of the Department of Environmental Health at the Harvard School of Public Health, will serve as the next dean of the University of California, Los Angeles, Fielding School of Public Health, according to a Tuesday announcement.

The appointment, effective July 1, was shared with HSPH affiliates in a Tuesday email from HSPH Dean Andrea A. Baccarelli. Nadeau will succeed Ronald S. Brookmeyer, who has led the Fielding School since 2018.

Nadeau served as the Environmental Health department chair for three years, leading efforts to study and address climate-related health issues. She also played a central role in the transition of HSPH’s embattled François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights.

Baccarelli named her interim director last December after dismissing the center’s longtime leader, Mary T. Bassett ’74, then restructured the center’s leadership with a four-person faculty advisory committee that includes Nadeau. The center has been without a permanent director since Bassett’s departure, and the search has produced no public updates.

An HSPH spokesperson declined to comment on whether Nadeau will continue to serve on the advisory committee. Nadeau did not respond to a request for comment.

Bassett’s removal drew immediate backlash. A petition calling for her reinstatement gathered more than 2,400 signatures, including those of more than 600 Harvard affiliates. Alongside the leadership change, Baccarelli announced that the center would narrow its focus to children’s health and early development, moving away from its broader work on human rights in marginalized and displaced groups.

The FXB center has faced scrutiny over its Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights and a partnership with Birzeit University in the West Bank. An internal Harvard task force on antisemitism released last April criticized the center’s programming, and HSPH suspended the Birzeit partnership last March.

Nadeau, the John Rock Professor of Climate and Population Studies at HSPH, also serves as a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. She directs the Allergy, Climate, and Exposomics Laboratory.

In a UCLA press release, Baccarelli called Nadeau’s time at Harvard “immensely productive and successful,” praising her as an “enormously valuable schoolwide leader” who has supported the school’s educational and research goals.

“The Harvard Chan family will miss Kari very much, but we look forward to continuing to collaborate with her and the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health,” Baccarelli wrote.

Since January 2025, Nadeau has also helped lead the LA Fire Human Exposure and Long-Term Health study, a multi-university research initiative established to examine the health effects of the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires. The UCLA press release cited her collaborations with UCLA and Californian state agencies as evidence she was well-positioned to lead the Fielding School.

Nadeau’s ties to California run deep. She spent nearly two decades on the faculty at Stanford University, where she continues to hold an adjunct professorship, before joining Harvard. UCLA Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Darnell M. Hunt wrote in a campus message that Nadeau’s “academic, professional and administrative experience and achievements” would help guide her leadership of the school.

Nadeau said that she was excited to take on the deanship at UCLA and start a new phase in her professional career.

“I am delighted to accept the position of dean of the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health,” she said in the press release. “My career has prepared me to build on the Fielding School’s excellence in research, education and community impact. I am deeply grateful and honored to join UCLA and to contribute to furthering the school’s growth and success.”

—Staff writer Riya S. Shah can be reached at [email protected] and on Signal at riyas.23. Follow her on X @RiyaShah233.

—Staff writer Juliana L. Yao can be reached at [email protected] and on Signal at jly.87. Follow her on X @JulianaYao298.