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UT San Antonio School of Public Health has been renamed the Kate Marmion School of Public Health. The name change was the result of a $30 million contribution to the school that UT San Antonio president Taylor Eighmy calls "transformative."
"Each of the students that graduate from the Kate Marmion School of Public Health is going to go off and have a career in public health that, in each of those careers, is going to touch thousands of families and the generations that come from those families," Eighmy said. "So if you think about the original concept of the gift and how it will give back, it is going to shape lives in South Texas forever."
The Kate Marmion Charitable Foundation is named in honor of the granddaughter of the late former Texas Governor Dolph Briscoe Jr. The foundation has given tens of millions of dollars to organizations that support the health and well-being of South Texans. Foundation president Dolph Briscoe IV stressed that the charity's main area of emphasis is San Antonio, Uvalde, and greater South Texas.
That's precisely the area on which the School of Public Health — now the Marmion School of Public Health — is also focused, according to the school's inaugural dean, Dr. Vasan Ramachandran. He said this donation will help fund the infrastructure they need to better understand ways to deliver healthcare to these communities, many of which are underserved.
"They're often referred to as the last mile gap," Ramachandran explained. "This gift makes it a first mile opportunity. How do we go to these places and make it possible for them to partake in health and healthcare, working with the School of Public Health?"
This donation comes as the school graduates the 23 students of its inaugural class with their Master of Public Health. They enrolled when the school opened its doors in 2024. In addition to its current MPH and MD/MPH dual degree programs, the school plans to offer a doctoral degree in the future.
This is the beginning of a brighter, healthier future for San Antonio and South Texas, Ramachandran said. The population currently faces many challenges, with high rates of diabetes, heart disease, certain types of cancer, and all of the complications that go with those diseases. But in a decade, Ramachandran envisions a South Texas that people are drawn to from all over the world.
"They'll want to move to South Texas because people here are healthy," he said. "There's a sense of well-being, and that well-being is not just physical. It's also mental well-being, emotional well-being, a sense of community, a sense of art, spiritual well-being."
Ramachandran also leads the RURAL Study, which is a research project dedicated to learning about health disparities in the underserved communities that the Marmion Foundation seeks to support.
