Ashish Jha

Ashish Jha has been Dean of the Brown University School of Public Health since 2020. His previous roles in academia include a professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School and the faculty director of the Harvard Global Health Institute. He is both a practicing physician and a globally trusted expert on major issues impacting public 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 analysis of key issues and advised local and federal policy makers around the world. As the White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator, appointed in 20222, Jha led the work that increased the development of and access to treatments and newly formulated vaccines, dramatically improved testing and surveillance, facilitated major investments in indoor air quality measures, and put in place an infrastructure to respond to current and future disease outbreaks more effectively. 

His undergraduate degree is in economics from Columbia University. He received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School and then trained as a resident in Internal Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. He completed his fellowship in General Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. He also has a Master of Public Health degree from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.