Ashish Jha | Former White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator (2022-2023); Dean,
Brown University School of Public Health

A global leader driving public health research, policy, and practice, Dr. Jha serves as Dean of the Brown University School of Public Health.
An accomplished and practicing physician, Dr. Jha is recognized globally as a trusted expert on major issues facing the nation’s health and a catalyst for new thinking and approaches. A long-time leader on pandemic preparedness and response, from directing groundbreaking research on Ebola to serving on the frontlines of the COVID-19 response, he has led national and international analyses of key issues and advised policy makers around the world.
President Joe Biden appointed Dr. Jha as White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator in March 2022, describing him as “one of the leading public health experts in America.” From the White House, Dr. Jha led the work that increased the development of and access to treatments and newly formulated vaccines, dramatically improved testing and surveillance, rebuilt our strategic national stockpiles, facilitated major investments in improving indoor Air Quality, and put in place an infrastructure to respond to current and future disease outbreaks more effectively. He has received bipartisan praise for his pragmatic approach to public health that, in the words of President Biden, “translates…complex scientific challenges into concrete actions” that help improve millions of lives.
Dr. Jha is one of the most highly cited researchers in the nation, having published more than three hundred publications in the most prestigious medical journals including Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA and the BMJ. He is also a frequent contributor to a range of public media. His work has focused on how to improve the quality and costs of care that people receive, studying the impact of local and national policy efforts both in the US and around the world. Before serving as Dean of the School of Public Health at Brown University, he was the K.T. Li Professor of Global Health at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He also served the Director of the Harvard Global Health Institute.