July 14, 2021 – President Joe Biden nominated Atul Gawande to lead global health development at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), including for COVID-19.
Gawande 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 was hired in 2018 by Berkshire Hathaway Inc, Amazon.com Inc and JPMorgan Chase & Co to lead Haven (Boston, MA), a joint healthcare company aimed at cutting costs for the companies’ U.S. employees. The short-lived venture shut down in February.
Gawande, a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1998 and the winner of a MacArthur Fellowship, is also founder and chair of Ariadne Labs, a center for health systems innovation, and of Lifebox, a nonprofit organization aimed at making surgery safer globally.
During the pandemic, Gawande co-founded CIC Health, which operates COVID-19 testing and vaccination nationally, and served on Biden transition’s advisory board on COVID-19.