Former Los Angeles Times publisher Richard T. Schlosberg III has been named as the new president and chief executive officer of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, ending weeks of speculation over who would lead the nation's third-largest foundation.

Packard Foundation leaders also have given initial approval for one of its most ambitious programs yet, a multi-million dollar effort to create the nation's largest children's health care facility at the unified University of California San Francisco and Stanford University hospital system, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

Schlosberg, 54, retired in 1997 as publisher and chief executive officer of the Los Angeles Times and executive vice president of its parent company, Times Mirror.

He will start his new job May 3, taking over from long-time Packard Foundation head Colburn Wilbur. Wilbur is retiring after 23 years with the foundation.

Meanwhile, the UCSF/Stanford grants are expected to total "hundreds of millions of dollars" over the next 10 years as the Packard Foundation works with the smaller Lucile Packard Foundation for Children's Health and other matching grant programs, the Chronicle reports.

The grants will fund such pediatric specialties as asthma, cardiac health, neurobiology and neurosurgery services and endow up to 20 more faculty members at the two universities' medical schools, the paper reports.

The Packard Foundation reported $10.8 billion in assets as of Jan. 31. Foundation leaders expect to give an estimated $400 million in grants this year, primarily to environmental, population and scientific causes.

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archive/1999/03/24/MN72888.DTL