Last week, President Joe Biden named Dr. Ashish Jha as the White House's new COVID-19 response coordinator, succeeding Jeff Zients, who served in the role since the start of Biden's presidency and helped the government respond to the Delta and Omicron surges.
Zients--a former economic adviser to former President Barack Obama and help the United States engineer its nationwide vaccination campaign at the start of Biden's administration--is set to leave his position in April. Biden said that Jha will help the White House continue the nation's effort to provide more vaccine and boosters, get vaccines approved for the youngest Americans, and improved how public spaces like schools and workplaces respond to COVID.
"Dr. Jha is one of the leading public health experts in America, and a well known figure to many Americans from his wise and calming public presence," Biden said, alluding to Jha's media presence throughout the pandemic. "As we enter a new moment in the pandemic--executing on my National COVID-19 Preparedness Plan and managing the ongoing risks from COVID--Dr. Jha is the perfect person for the job."
Jha is the Dean of Brown University's School of Public Health and have previously lead Harvard's Global Health Institute. The White House has previously consulted Jha to help develop the government's roadmap for the next phase of the pandemic, according to NPR.
In a statement released by Brown University, Jha said he was honored by the president's invitation to join the administration. "To the American people, I promise I will be straightforward and clear in sharing what we know, in explaining what we don't know and how we will learn more, and what the future will ask of all of us," Jha said, quoted by NPR.
In research with funding from sources such as the U.S. National Institutes of Health, Jha works to improve the quality of healthcare systems with specialized focus on how national policies impact care, according to Brown University's statement. Jha has led some of the seminal work comparing the performance of the U.S. health system to those of other high-income countries to better understand why the U.S. spends more but often achieves less, according to the statement.
Zients has led the White House COVID response team for 14 months and held numerous public briefings throughout the pandemic alongside other federal health officials. Biden praised Zients work in a statement, noting that most adults in the U.S. have gotten vaccinated due to his campaign strategies. More than 75% of adults have received two doses of vaccine and over 558 million doses have been administered in the U.S. in total, according to data compiled by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.