Military Medicine Center To Open At UCLA

The first university-based military medicine center on the West Coast will launch at UCLA, thanks to an initial $2 million gift from two sons who want to support their father’s dream of helping servicemen and women, school officials will announce today.

Called the Ronald A. Katz Center for Collaborative Military Medicine at UCLA, the facility will work with the U.S. military to find better ways to care for the nation’s veterans, officials said.

The center will help physicians and researchers form partnerships with specialty-care experts and military hospitals, said Ronald Katz, who, as a board member with the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, founded Operation Mend, a program that works with Brooke Army Medical Center in Texas and the Veterans Affairs Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System to provide free reconstructive surgery to injured veterans.