SCHOOL WORK
MLK Community Healthcare CEO and FSPH Alumnus Delivers Commencement Address DR. ELAINE BATCHLOR (MPH ’90), chief executive officer of MLK Community Healthcare in Los Angeles, delivered the 2021 commencement address for the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health’s Virtual Commencement Celebration June 11. Batchlor leads a health system that includes Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Hospital (MLKCH) — a private safety-net hospital — as well as outpatient practices, the MLK Community Medical Group, a fundraising foundation, and community and population health programs located in South Los Angeles. She was instrumental in the development and start-up of MLKCH, which opened in 2015 as a private, nonprofit hospital with the mission of improving the health of one of the most underserved communities in the state. A member of the National Academy of Medicine, Batchlor is board-certified in both internal medicine and rheumatology. She has received numerous accolades over the years, including the Partners in Care Foundation’s Vision & Excellence in Healthcare Leadership Award and the Irvine Foundation Leadership Award, which recognizes “innovative, effective leaders whose breakthrough solutions to critical state challenges improve people’s lives, create opportunity, and contribute to a better California.” In addition to being a Fielding School alumnus, Batchlor serves on FSPH’s board of advisors.
In Memoriam: Drs. Ellen Alkon and William Hinds DR. ELLEN ALKON, professor emeritus in the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, whose career as a public health specialist mirrored the growth of the discipline in the latter half of the 20th century, passed away in December 2020. A pediatrician by training with a lifelong passion for public health, Alkon held leadership positions in three local health departments. In Maryland she served as chief of school health for Anne Arundel County. In Minnesota she was director of maternal and child health, and she served as commissioner of health for the City of Minneapolis. From 1980 until her retirement, she served in the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services and the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, holding the positions of medical director for public health and chief executive officer of the Long Beach Comprehensive Health Center, medical director of Public Health (West Area), and director of public health education for physicians. At the UCLA Fielding School, she taught the course “Issues and Problems in Local Health Administration” for two decades. 32
U C L A F I E L D I N G S C H O O L O F P U B L I C H E A LT H M AG A Z I N E
DR. WILLIAM C. HINDS, an internationally renowned scholar on airborne particles and respiratory protection, and professor emeritus of environmental health sciences at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, passed away in May 2021. Hinds served as the first chair of the Department of Environmental Health Sciences after the school’s departmentalization in 1989. Over the years, he also served as director of the UCLA Industrial Hygiene Program, principal investigator and director of the NIOSH Southern California Education and Research Center, and co-director of the UCLA component of the NIEHS Southern California Environmental Health Center. His primary research area was fundamental and applied research related to aerosols and industrial hygiene controls of airborne contaminants, including respiratory protection. Hinds was a much beloved mentor to 11 PhD students, including senior associate dean for academic programs Dr. Yifang Zhu, and 33 MPH and MS students. Perhaps his best-known contribution was the seminal textbook “Aerosol Technology: Properties, Behavior and Measurement of Airborne Particles,” the first such text in the field.
