$25 Million

From the LA Business Journal: Shirley and Walter Wang – the chief executive and president of Westchester-based plastic pipe maker JM Eagle Inc. – have agreed to give $25 million to UCLA Health to create the UCLA Walter and Shirley Wang Center for Integrative Digestive Health. The center will offer help to those living with gastrointestinal disorders. The center takes a holistic approach, looking at disorders in a variety of ways. For the Wangs, the decision to donate to UCLA was personal.

“My son was quite sick with stomach issues and almost couldn’t graduate,” Shirley Wang recalled. Enter Eric Esrailian, chief of the UCLA Vatche and Tamar Manoukian Division of Digestive Diseases and director of the Melvin and Bren Simon Digestive Diseases Center. He encouraged the Wangs to bring their son to UCLA for treatment. Shirley said she appreciated the center’s holistic approach and how it “looks at things as a whole.”

“It really helped my son,” she said. While in the waiting room, Shirley Wang said she heard the receptionist tell someone they would have to wait a year for the center’s next appointment. “That’s why Walter and I decided to donate to this so more and more people could access this treatment and be looked at holistically,” she said, adding that her son was now doing well.

“Thanks to their visionary and transformational gift, the UCLA Walter and Shirley Wang Center for Integrative Digestive Health will be the undisputed global leader in this field,” Esrailian said in a statement about the donation. “Our clinicians and researchers have taught the world about digestive health and wellness for decades. The formalization of this endowed center is unprecedented.” ...

Full story at https://labusinessjournal.com/featured/ucla-health-gets-25-million-donation/.