A $350-Million Gift to Harvard Is the Latest in a String of Donations for Public Health

The largest gift in Harvard University’s history—a $350-million pledge announced this month—generated buzz both for its size and its destination. The recipient wasn’t Harvard’s powerhouse business school or its august law school, but the school of public health.

“There are acts of generosity that send signals to the world, signals that echo long into the future,” said Harvard’s president, Drew Faust, upon unveiling the gift. “This gift sends such a signal. It tells the world that this is a public-health moment.”

The donation to Harvard is the latest and largest in a string of megagifts to schools of public health over the last two decades, a trend that has accelerated in recent years.

“There is increasing attention by philanthropists to issues of public health and the vital importance of schools of public health to society,” said Linda Fried, dean of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. “I think philanthropists, including the family that gave the gift to Harvard, understand that we need to invest a huge amount in innovation and science to solve the population health issues we’re confronting.”

Naming Trend

Columbia’s School of Public Health was renamed after a $33-million donation in 1998 from the foundation of investor Joseph Mailman. The gift set a record for the largest amount ever received by a school of public health, but it wouldn’t stand long. Later that year, Michael Bloomberg earmarked $35 million of a $100-million donation for the Johns Hopkins University’s school of public health. It was renamed the Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2001.

The Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was named in 2008 after a $50-million gift. Earlier this year a think tank affiliated with the financier Michael Milken gave $40-million to George Washington University’s school of public health.

The Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University became the first to bear a philanthropist’s name, in 1994, said James Curran, the school’s longtime dean. Today, 11 of the 52 schools of public health accredited by the Council on Education for Public Health are named for wealthy benefactors. That includes five of the top six schools of public health as ranked by U.S. News & World Report.

Long-Term Returns

Harvard became the fifth, thanks to the gift of a prominent Hong Kong family, one of whom, Gerald Chan, attended the school of public health before amassing his fortune in finance and real estate. He and his brother, Ronnie Chan, run the Morningside Group, a private-equity firm, as well as the Morningside Foundation. The school will be named in honor of T.S. Chan, their late father.

At a news conference announcing the gift, Gerald Chan cited as the impetus his mother’s nursing background and gains in human life expectancy he attributed to public-health advancements in vaccinology.

“Even in business, return is not measured only in financial terms, but in human lives and human health,” Mr. Chan said.

Many in public health say the rising philanthropic interest stems from this incorporation of business principles into giving strategies.

“The way we like to talk about it here is that donors want a stronger [return on investment], and public health really provides that,” said Joshua Else, who oversees fundraising at the Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health. “Public health affects entire populations—cities, states, nations. And it’s a relatively low cost.”

Asked who or what inspired this change in philanthropic approach, those in the field invoke one name without fail: Bill Gates. Founded in 2000, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded 2,419 grants through its Global Health division, according to the foundation website. The grants include a $20-million gift in 2006 to establish a department of global health at the University of Washington and more than $8.5-million later that year to help the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health combat malaria.

The Gates foundation, advocates say, raised public health’s philanthropic profile by embracing much of what made it a tough sell historically. Public health challenges are complex, vast, and often unseen. So are the solutions.

“If we’re successful, people don’t always know we’re there,” said Julie MacMillan, who oversees programs funded by the Gillings gift as the managing director of research and innovation solutions at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “If you drink a glass of water and don’t get sick, you don’t think about it very much.”

Below the Radar

Low visibility has handicapped public health’s philanthropic potential for decades, but that’s beginning to change. In particular, the anti-obesity movement and its focus on prevention have helped popularize the public-health cause.

“We used to brag the best work was done when nothing happened,” said Georges Benjamin, head of the American Public Health Association. “People are beginning to see the bad things that happen when you don’t invest in the infrastructure of wellness.”

Interest from private donors, however, comes at a time of shrinking government support for research and staff. The Centers for Disease Prevention and Control and the National Institutes of Health have faced budget cuts. Local health departments cut 40,000 jobs between 2008 and 2013, reports the National Association of County and City Health Officials.

Once dependent on taxpayer support, schools of public health sense a need to diversify their sources of revenue. “We know it’s getting tighter,” said Ms. MacMillan. “No school of public health can think the way it thought 20 years ago.”

Michael Voligny, acting vice dean of external relations at Harvard’s School of Public Health, said the tilt toward private dollars may allow researchers to pursue the riskier, more entrepreneurial types of projects that government tends to eschew. “You have to have years of data and a pretty solid case before NIH will even look at you,” he said.