On December 17, 2021, the U.S. Senate confirmed President Joe Biden’s nomination of Atul Gawande, MD, MPH, as Assistant Administrator of Global Health Development at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Dr. Gawande assumed the new role in January 2022.
Atul Gawande, MD, MPH
Dr. Gawande’s role at USAID will involve efforts to prevent child and maternal deaths, control the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and combat infectious diseases such as COVID-19, according to a news release issued earlier this year.
Prior to joining the Biden-Harris Administration, Dr. Gawande was a practicing general and endocrine surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Professor at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Contributions to Public Health
Dr. Gawande is founder and Chair of Ariadne Labs, a joint center for health systems innovation, and of Lifebox, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to make surgery safer globally. He also co-founded CIC Health, a public benefit corporation supporting pandemic response operations nationally, and served as a member of the Biden transition COVID-19 Advisory Board. From 2018 to 2020, Dr. Gawande was Chief Executive Officer of Haven, the Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and a JPMorgan Chase health-care venture. In addition, Dr. Gawande was a longtime staff writer for The New Yorker magazine and the author of four books: Complications, Better, The Checklist Manifesto, and Being Mortal.
Dr. Gawande is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and the recipient of numerous awards, including two National Magazine Awards; Academy Health’s Impact Award for highest research impact on health care; a MacArthur Fellowship; and the Lewis Thomas Award for writing about science.
USAID is an independent federal agency that provides economic, development, and humanitarian assistance globally. It aims to demonstrate good will around the world; increase global stability by addressing the root causes of violence; open new markets and generate opportunities for trade; create innovative solutions for development challenges; save lives; and advance democracy, governance, and peace.
