Biden nominates Gawande to senior job at USAID

U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday nominated writer, surgeon and public health expert Atul Gawande to lead global health development at the U.S. Agency for International Development, including for COVID-19, the White House said.

Gawande, author of four New York Times best-selling books and a professor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, would serve as the assistant administrator of USAID’s Bureau for Global Health, if confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

His role at USAID will focus on efforts to prevent child and maternal deaths, control the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and combat infectious diseases, such as COVID-19, a White House official said. Gawande appears to be taking his own advice. Last month, he told advanced degree graduates at Stanford University to be open to trying stuff – to saying yes to new opportunities.

On Tuesday, he said he was honored to be tapped for the job. With more COVID deaths worldwide in the first half of 2021 than in all of 2020, I’m grateful for the chance to help end this crisis and to re-strengthen public health systems worldwide, he wrote on Twitter. Gawande, an outspoken critic of his industry’s practices, was hired in 2018 by Berkshire Hathaway Inc, Amazon.com Inc and JPMorgan Chase & Co to lead Haven, a joint healthcare company aimed at cutting costs for U.S. employees.

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