Mary Ellen Kullman, MPH, who retired in June after nearly three decades as a transformational leader of Archstone Foundation, has been named the 2022 recipient of the American Public Health Association’s Steven P. Wallace Lifetime Achievement Award.
The Aging and Public Health Section of the APHA, the most prominent trade association and advocacy group for the public health profession, annually recognizes someone with a career lasting more than 20 years “who has made a significant contribution in the areas of geriatrics and gerontology.” The organization renamed the award last December to honor the late Steven Wallace, a longtime UCLA Fielding School of Public Health professor of community health sciences.
“Mary Ellen spent almost her entire career not only working for our foundation, but building a strong foundation, and so this honor is wholly appropriate” said Archstone Foundation CEO Christopher A. Langston, PhD. “All who work with our organization, along with thousands of older Californians and their caregivers, have benefitted many times over from her contributions to shaping the interconnected fields of public health, aging, and philanthropy.”
Ms. Kullman was hired as the first program officer of Archstone Foundation in 1995, when it was known as the FHP Foundation and funded organizations seeking to improve health care at all stages of life and in several parts of the world. Bringing a public health perspective and framework to her work in philanthropy, she was instrumental in the organization’s evolution to a singular focus on improving the health and well-being of older people and their caregivers in the nation’s most populous state.
She was also central to the Foundation’s award of more than 1,150 grants worth almost $120 million. Along the way she helped to launch and sustain Grantmakers In Aging, the national affinity group.
Her long tenure with the Foundation broadened her expertise and deepened her relationships statewide and nationally – relationships like the one she had with Steve Wallace, the award’s namesake, and which she shared with others at professional meetings including the APHA’s annual conference.
Rather than avoid the biggest public health challenges involving older people, Ms. Kullman successfully pressed the Foundation to put its resources to work tackling such issues as elder abuse, end of life care and, perhaps most notably, fall prevention – not only by raising awareness but also by funding research and evaluation, demonstration projects, direct services, convenings, policy formulation and advocacy.
She also became renowned for getting public health and gerontology professionals, philanthropic and community partners, national organizations, and their members to collaborate on tackling these challenges.
Her seminal leadership helped generate a multitude of evidence around falls, for example, which has led to several prevention programs, a Fall Prevention Center of Excellence, legislation in several states to reduce fall risks, improved medical facility designs, better education and training of emergency medical personnel, and new products that provide data analytics, remote monitoring, and caregiver alerts that improve safety for older adults in their homes.
