Brown’s Jha to be Biden’s New COVID Czar
GoLocalProv News Team
Brown’s Jha to be Biden’s New COVID Czar
“Jeff Zients to Leave as Biden’s Covid Czar and Be Replaced by Ashish Jha,” reported the New York Times. “The choice of Dr. Jha, an outspoken public health expert, is a sign that the White House believes the country is entering a new phase of the pandemic.”
Jha, who has been a regular national news commentator during the pandemic along with Brown’s Dr. Megan Ranney, is expected to assume the position next month when Zients departs.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST"With much of the country vaccinated, officials said the federal response would become more of a long-term public health effort and less of a moment-by-moment crisis requiring rapid government action. If new variants of the virus spread, they said, Dr. Jha will be able to draw upon the tools his predecessor put in place during the past 14 months," NYT wrote.
About Jha
Jha was named Dean of the School of Public Health at Brown University in February 2020 — just as coronavirus was emerging.
He left his role as Faculty Director of the Harvard Global Health Institute to come to Providence. He had previously worked as professor of global health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and has served as the school’s dean for global strategy since 2018.
He was also a practicing general internist at the V.A. Boston Healthcare System and a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.
Jha earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Columbia University in 1992 and an M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1997, before training in internal medicine at the University of California in San Francisco. He 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 T.H. Chan School of Public Health.