Tulane’s public health school secures major gift to expand

NEW ORLEANS — A longtime donor who has given more than $160 million to Tulane University is the new namesake of the university’s growing 112-year-old graduate program school of public healthTulane officials announced Wednesday.

The amount of Celia Scott Weatherhead’s latest gift was not disclosed, but school officials said it will help transform the institution into one of the world’s best. Weatherhead graduated from Tulane’s Newcomb College in 1965.

The university said the gifts she and her late husband Albert made over several decades to support the cause represent the largest amount in the school’s history.

The school also said a new gift from Weatherhead will help expand its downtown New Orleans campus and increase research funding, with the goal of making the school the best school of its kind in the United States and the best in the world.

Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine was founded in 1912. Its research and teaching areas include biostatistics, maternal and child health, epidemiology, nutrition, health policy, clinical research, environmental health sciences, and violence prevention.

“Her gift is a true game changer,” said Thomas LaVeist, dean of what is now Tulane’s Celia Scott Weatherhead School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. “It will further advance research into the most devastating diseases and the most troubling and complex issues of our time. It will provide generations of students with the skills and knowledge they need to help heal our world.”

Weatherhead is a former member of Tulane’s top governing body and currently serves on the Public Health Dean’s Advisory Council, the school’s highest advisory board.