Self-made billionaire Michael Bloomberg once toyed with the idea of running for president. But now the former New York City mayor is dropping $300 million on a new public-health initiative at his alma mater, Johns Hopkins University, all with a view of impacting public policy.
“By spreading smart public health strategies that save lives and bringing people together to try new approaches, we can make the same strides in the 21st century against health threats like air pollution, gun violence, and obesity that we did in the 20th century against polio and other infectious diseases,” Mr. Bloomberg said in a statement posted on the Initiative’s website, The Baltimore Sun reported.
As New York City Mayor, Mr. Bloomberg was a cheerleader of a now-defunct ban on the selling of jumbo-sized fountain sodas, a move he defended as in the interest of public health.
“It’s not perfect, it’s not the only answer, it’s not the only cause of people being overweight — but we’ve got to do something,” said Mr. Bloomberg on MSNBC in May 2012, Mediaite.com reported at the time. “We have an obligation to warn you when things are not good for your health.”
A longtime proponent of gun control, Mr. Bloomberg has repeatedly poured financial resources into efforts to promote new federal legislation on gun regulation and elect proponents of gun control. He has also previously couched gun control as a “public health” issue.
“It’s time for Congress and the White House to put public health above special-interest politics,” Mr. Bloomberg said in January 2013 at a gun-policy event hosted at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health. The graduate school, which turns 100 this year, was renamed for Mr. Bloomberg in April 2001.
Mr. Bloomberg, 74, graduated from Johns Hopkins in 1964, before going on to earn his MBA two years later at Harvard Business School.
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