An additional $50 million gift from Joe Wen, the founder of multinational conglomerate Formosa Ltd., is supporting the creation of a new school of public health at the University of California, Irvine.
The existing program is being elevated into a school after gaining approval from the UC Board of Regents last week, making it the first school of public health in Orange County.
In recognition of the gift, the school will be named the Joe C. Wen School of Population & Public Health. It is said to be the largest gift to UCI from a donor under the age of 50, and the first time the University of California system has named a school after an immigrant from Taiwan.
“Our family’s commitment to advancing healthcare and education has always been a core value,” Wen said in a statement.
The gift marks another milestone in UCI’s effort to raise $2 billion in an effort called “Brilliant Future Campaign.”
Thus far, the campaign that launched in 2015 has raised $1.84 billion from 103,600 donors, who have given 219,647 gifts. Among well-known OC business entrepreneurs who have donated substantial amounts are Charlie Dunlop, Don Beal, Bill Gross, Paul and Jo Butterworth and the Chao family.
The university’s biggest donation ever was in 2017 from Broadcom co-founder Henry Samueli and his wife Susan, who donated $200 million to build the Susan & Henry Samueli College of Health Sciences.
The college will host the School of Public Health in addition to the School of Medicine, the Sue & Bill Gross School of Nursing, the School of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences and the Susan Samueli Integrative Health Institute.
Bernadette Boden-Albala, a professor of health, society and behavior, was appointed founding dean of the newly created school, which will launch this upcoming fall.
“This gift is providing significant support for the new school to make sure that it’s able to address the highest priorities in public health as a critically important discipline, including optimizing health and wellbeing for everyone,” Boden-Albala told the Business Journal.
“We’re so honored that Joe Wen is really aligned with that vision.”
Big Benefactor
Of the total gift, $42.5 million will go toward the school of public health, including hiring more faculty and the creation of new degree programs. The remaining $7.5 million will help advance cardiological research, education and clinical operations within the School of Medicine and UCI Health.
In addition to the school of public health, UCI has plans to also rename the School of Medicine’s division of cardiology to the Mary & Steve Wen Cardiovascular Division after Wen’s parents, as well as UCI’s cardiovascular center in Orange the Tsai Ya Au Heart & Vascular Pavilion, in memory of Wen’s late grandfather.
“Their example taught me that I should give back to the community and that success can only be achieved through dedication and hard work,” Wen said.
Wen immigrated to the U.S. from Taiwan as a teen, and his family’s early years in America were challenging, UCI said.
“Wen’s parents worked hard to support the family, and he worked through college and graduate school to pay his tuition and help his parents,” according to UCI.
“After earning a bachelor’s degree from UCLA and an MBA from USC, Wen started his first business in 2003 as a paper merchant.”
Wen made his fortune through his first business Formosa, which is based overseas but has several local commercial real estate holdings.
Its five core businesses include venture capital, finance lending, real estate holding and development, property management and forest-products manufacturing and trading.
Wen is also the founder and chief executive of Sakura Paper Inc., a Cypress-based division of Formosa that makes and distributes a range of sustainable paper products.
He’s been an active investor in local commercial real estate, having purchased One Pacific Plaza for roughly $42 million last September. The Huntington Beach office complex includes a 12-story tower and two six-story buildings totaling about 394,000 square feet.
Wen is a “big benefactor” of UCI, Boden-Albala said.
This recent gift from Wen follows a $20 million donation he made in 2022 for the Joe C. Wen & Family Center for Advanced Care, a 168,000-square-foot outpatient facility that opened in April.
The five-story center, constructed for a total of $221 million, was the first of three scheduled buildings to open at the $1.3 billion UCI Health—Irvine campus. It features 120 exam rooms with pediatric and adult specialty services.
The Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center and Ambulatory Care building, the second phase of the medical complex, opened last month and a 144-bed acute care hospital with a 24-hour emergency department is scheduled to open in 2025.
Public Health Studies
Transitioning from a program to a fully-fledged school will allow for the expansion of enrollment, among other benefits, according to Boden-Albala.
Last year, the public health program received a $14 million grant from the Irvine Health Foundation to establish seven endowed chairs to recruit and retain top public health academics and experts.
“We’ll be able to have access to that money because it meant so much to the Irvine Health Foundation that we would be a school,” Boden-Albala said.
The study of population and public health is community based and covers a wide variety of issues ranging from epidemiology to health policies, according to Boden-Albala.
The public health program, originally created in 2003, has tripled its faculty to 60 over the last five years and currently offers nine degree programs, with plans to add a new master’s degree in global health.
“It’s really special to be at the beginning of something,” Boden-Albala said. “None of this could have happened without the incredible passion and commitment of our faculty, our staff and our students.”
Once launched, Boden-Albala wants to build more focus on nutrition within the school of public health because she said many children in Orange County are “nutritionally insecure,” which could make them more likely to develop obesity, asthma and cardiovascular disease.
Boden-Albala, who joined UCI public health in 2019, previously served as senior associate dean of New York University School of Global Public Health.