Atul Gawande nominated for senior USAID post

Public health expert, surgeon, and writer Atul Gawande has been nominated by President Joe Biden to lead global health development at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Gawande—professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, surgeon, author, New Yorker staff writer, and co-founder—would become the assistant administrator of USAID’s Bureau for Global Health.

Gawande’s role at USAID would involve efforts to prevent child and maternal deaths, control the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and combat infectious diseases such as COVID-19, according to a July 13, 2021, Reuters article.

During the pandemic, Gawande co-founded CIC Health, which runs COVID-19 testing and vaccination sites across the U.S. Gawande also served on the Biden transition’s advisory board on COVID-19.

Read the Reuters article: Biden nominates surgeon, author Atul Gawande to senior job at USAID