Alumni Spotlight: Kyle Horne (EMPH ’22) Named to UCLA Fielding School Hall of Fame

The UCLA Executive Programs Office in Health Policy and Management is proud to celebrate Executive MPH (EMPH) alumnus Kyle Horne, MPH, CNP, who has been named to the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health (FSPH) Hall of Fame and selected as the recipient of the 2026 Emerging Professional Award.

This recognition highlights Kyle’s career-long commitment to driving health equity, creative public health programming, and sustainable healthcare operations locally and internationally.

Kyle’s career at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) began in 2016. Serving initially as the Program Manager for Literally Healing from 2016 to 2019, he subsequently led program design, funding, growth, research, and innovation in Clinical Services through 2025. During his tenure with the literacy program, Kyle helped distribute nearly half a million books to underserved pediatric patients and families. His creative efforts included co-authoring a children’s book on COVID-19 narrated by Oscar-winning actor Natalie Portman and collaborating with New York Times bestselling author Drew Daywalt on Hi, Juicebox! to comfort long-term pediatric hospital patients.

In May 2019, Kyle co-founded and became Chair of CHLA’s Sustainability Committee. In this capacity, he led early efforts to evaluate and improve the hospital’s environmental footprint while embedding social determinants of health into institutional operations.

Building on that foundation, Kyle became the Manager of Sustainability at CHLA in 2024 and is now directing a long-term strategic framework for energy, waste, water, and material stewardship. By linking environmental conditions directly to pediatric health outcomes, his work ensures operational resilience and fiscal responsibility while creating healthier healing environments for children, families, and healthcare staff.

While balancing his expanding sustainability leadership and program manager roles at CHLA, Kyle completed his Master of Public Health in Health Policy and Management through UCLA’s EMPH program, graduating in 2022.

A cornerstone of his EMPH experience was the Business Plan Project which integrates the program’s core business classes in marketing, finance, and strategy. Leveraging his real-world expertise at CHLA, Kyle collaborated with fellow EMPH students Gerardo Arana, Kunal Wahi, and Kevin Wichaya to develop a strategic business proposal. Their project outlined a collaborative framework with The Walt Disney Company to deliver interactive literacy activities and new books to hospitalized pediatric patients and their families in medical centers across the United States.

The project exemplified the core mission of the EMPH program: applying rigorous administrative, financial, and strategic policy coursework to solve real-world healthcare challenges.

Kyle’s dedication to public health extends far beyond Southern California. In 2008, he founded Together! ACT Now (T!AN), a creative health non-profit whose mission is to end the spread of HIV in poor and rural areas of Malawi through theatre, education, and access. T!AN has educated over 110,000 Malawians on HIV, provided over 10,000 HIV tests in remote villages, and currently runs eight community groups.

Kyle is actively involved in the Bruin community, as an alumni mentor in the EMPH program and serving on the Board of Directors for the UCLA Health Policy and Management Alumni Association, guiding and advising the next generation of healthcare leaders.

Upon learning of his Hall of Fame induction, Kyle express his gratitude on LinkedIn for the educators who shaped his trajectory—from his early childhood teachers in Alaska, New Zealand, Michigan, and London to his professors at UCLA.

Reflecting on his academic journey in the EMPH program, he shared:

“To Professors at UCLA like Shira Shafir and Burt Cowgill who laid the foundation for understanding public health, to Professors Leah Vriesman, Julie Elginer, Tom Gordon, Laura Erskine, Mike Galper, Jonathan Freedman, Isomi Miake-Lye, Avram Kaplan, Hannah Reischl, and SO many more who helped me understand how to take that foundation and implement it to make an impact—thank you.”

The Executive MPH program extends congratulations to Kyle Horne on this well-deserved honor. His career embodies the core values of our program—leadership, innovation, and unwavering service to public health.