Raj Panjabi leads the Malaria Initiative; Pritesh Gandhi guides disaster, pandemic response at DHS.
President Joe Biden has appointed two Indian American health professionals for key jobs, one to lead his malaria initiative and the other to guide the administration’s response to disasters ranging from pandemics to acts of terrorism.
Liberia-born Dr. Raj Panjabi, CEO and co-founder of Last Mile Health, who played a key role in the 2013-16 West Africa Ebola epidemic has been named Malaria Coordinator to lead the president’s Malaria Initiative.
“I’m grateful for this chance to serve,” he tweeted after being sworn in Monday. “It’s an honor to serve the country that helped build back my own life as part of the Biden-Harris Administration.”
Named Chief Medical Officer at the Department of Homeland Security, Dr. Pritesh Gandhi serves as the principal advisor to DHS senior leadership on medical and public health issues related to natural and man-made disasters, border health.
Panjabi and his family “arrived in America 30 years ago after fleeing civil war in Liberia. A community of Americans rallied around my family to help us build back our lives,” he tweeted.
“In the face of unprecedented crises, I am humbled by the challenges our country and our world faces to build back better. But as I have learned in America: we are not defined by the conditions we face, we are defined by how we respond,” Panjabi added.
As a doctor and public health professional who has cared for patients alongside the staff of the President’s Malaria Initiative and its partners USAID and Center for Disease Control, Raj Panjabi said: “I’ve been inspired by how they’ve responded to fight malaria, one of the oldest and deadliest pandemics, and saved lives around the world.”
READ: List of Indian Americans in the Biden administration (January 2, 2021)
This mission is personal for him, said Panjabi recalling, “My grandparents and parents were infected with malaria while living in India. As a child in Liberia, I fell sick with malaria, and as a doctor serving in Africa, I have seen this disease take too many lives.”
“I’ve seen how the Malaria Initiative and its partners have responded with resolve in the countries where it operates,” he said “I’ve seen the relief on the faces of parents whose children survived malaria because they were treated with medicines and by health workers backed by its support.”
Panjabi and the Last Mile Health team played a key role in the 2013-16 West Africa Ebola epidemic, helping train over a thousand frontline and community health workers and support the government of Liberia to lead its national Ebola Operations Centre.
In response to COVID-19, he led Last Mile Health to support governments in Africa to train frontline health workers.
He served as the advisor to former president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in her role as the co-chair of the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response at the World Health Organization (WHO).
Panjabi who fled Liberia at age nine returned to Liberia as a medical student. He has served as an assistant professor of medicine at the Harvard Medical School, an associate physician at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the CEO and co-founder of Last Mile Health, according to his profile on LinkedIn.
A graduate of the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, Panjabi trained in internal medicine and primary care at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.
Panjabi received a masters degree in public health in epidemiology from Johns Hopkins. He has served as a faculty member at the Harvard Kennedy School.
Gandhi, a public health trained and board-certified internal medicine specialist, gives counsel the DHS Secretary, Assistant Secretary for the Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction (CWMD), the FEMA Administrator, according to DHS website.
He most recently served as the Associate Chief Medical Officer and Director of Adult Medicine at People’s Community Clinic, an Austin-based federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) which provides care to over 20,000 uninsured and medically underserved Central Texans, 70% of which live under the federal poverty line.
Gandhi co-led the Covid-19 response team and under his clinical leadership People’s Community Clinic was recognized by the US Department of Health & Human Services as a Gold Tier Health Center Quality Leader— ranking it among the top 10% of public health providers in the Nation.
He recently served as an associate faculty at the University of Texas at Austin Dell Medical School.
Over the course of his career, Gandhi has worked with working-class and marginalized communities to address social determinants of health and poverty. He is a Fulbright Scholar, Schweitzer Fellow, National Health Service Corps Scholar, and was named a Presidential Leadership Scholar in 2018.
Gandhi completed a dual internal medicine and pediatrics residency at Tulane University in New Orleans and holds a degree in International Relations & Economics from Tufts University where he also completed his MD and MPH.