Calls Indian American public health expert “the perfect person for the job”
President Joe Biden has named Dr. Ashish Jha, a leading Indian American public health expert, as the next White House Covid-19 response coordinator to lead America’s fight against the pandemic.
Jha, the dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health, will replace Jeffrey Zients, who has headed the Biden administration’s coronavirus response since January 2021.
“To lead this effort, I am excited to name Dr. Ashish Jha as the new White House Covid-19 Response Coordinator,” Biden said in a Thursday morning statement noting “Our work in combatting Covid is far from done.”
Read: No Need to panic over rising omicron cases: Dr. Ashish Jha (December 20, 2021)
“Dr. Jha is one of the leading public health experts in America, and a well known figure to many Americans from his wise and calming public presence,” he said.
“And as we enter a new moment in the pandemic – executing on my National Covid-19 Preparedness Plan and managing the ongoing risks from Covid – Dr. Jha is the perfect person for the job,” Biden said.
Jha, who will take a short-term leave from the School of Public Health for the temporary special assignment expressed enthusiasm about how he will build upon his work at Brown in role at the White House.
“Throughout this pandemic, we have worked at Brown to improve public understanding and information, and inform policy at every level of government here and around the globe,” Jha said.
“I am honored to accept President Biden’s invitation to serve and continue that work. I do so confident that the work of the Brown School of Public Health will advance around critical issues including pandemic preparedness and key initiatives we have launched and are growing, to improve understanding and policy in key public health issues, and train the next generation of public health leaders.”
Brown University President Christina H. Paxson said Jha’s appointment brings a top scholar and highly regarded Brown academic leader to White House service, offering a prominent illustration of the ways in which the University can make a positive impact on domestic and global issues of significant consequence.
“Ashish will bring to President Biden and our nation what he has brought — and will bring back — to Brown: an unrivaled commitment to improving public health equitably, effectively, creatively, with heart and a commitment to science,” Paxson said.
Read: Ashish Jha is new dean of Brown School of Public Health (September 15, 2020)
“The work he has begun at the School of Public Health will continue, with the strong team he has recruited and the full support of the University. And it will advance even further with the benefit of this experience in national and global leadership.”
Jha, a globally recognized expert on pandemic preparedness and response as well as on health policy research and practic, was appointed to lead the School of Public Health in February 2020.
Over the past year, Jha has participated in Congressional hearings on the COVID-19 vaccine rollout and the global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, among others. Recently, he advised the White House on the President’s national COVID-19 preparedness plan.
Jha joined the University after leading the Harvard Global Health Institute and teaching at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School.
Born in Pursaulia, Bihar, India, in 1970, Jha moved to Canada in 1979 and then to the United States in 1983. He earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Columbia University in 1992 and an MD from Harvard Medical School in 1997, before training in internal medicine at the University of California in San Francisco.
Jha completed his general medicine fellowship at Brigham & Women’s Hospital at Harvard Medical School and received his master of public health in 2004 from the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health.
A general internist who practiced previously with the West Roxbury VA in Massachusetts, he had continued his practice at the Providence VA Medical Center.
Jha has led groundbreaking research around Ebola and is now on the frontlines of the Covid-19 response, according to his official profile.
With sponsored funding from sources such as the National Institutes of Health, the Gates Foundation, the Climate Change Solutions Fund and the Commonwealth Fund, Jha’s research focuses on improving the quality of health care systems with a specialized focus on how national policies impact care.
Read: Biden names Dr. Ashish Jha new Covid response coordinator, to replace Jeff Zients (March 17, 2022)
He has led some of the seminal work comparing the performance of the US health system to those of other high-income countries to better understand why the US spends more but often achieves less in population health.
He has written extensively on the importance of international agencies like the World Health Organization and how they can be made more effective in infectious disease outbreaks like Ebola, Zika and now Covid-19.
He has published more than 200 empirical papers and writes regularly about ways to improve health care systems, both in the US and globally. Jha was elected as a member of the National Academy of Medicine in 2013.