Atul Gawande is a surgeon, author, and public health researcher from the United States. He works at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, where he specialises in general and endocrine surgery.
US President Joe Biden proposes to appoint Indian-American surgeon and best-selling author Atul Gawande to a top leadership position at the US Agency for International Development (USAID). According to the White House, Biden intends to nominate Gawande to the position of Assistant Administrator of USAID's Bureau for Global Health.
Gawande is the author of four New York Times best-selling books: Complications, Better, The Checklist Manifesto, and Being Mortal.
"I'm honored to be nominated to lead global health development at USAID, including for COVID. With more COVID deaths worldwide in the first half of 2021 than in all of 2020, I'm grateful for the chance to help end this crisis and to re-strengthen public health systems worldwide," Gawande said in a tweet.
Gawande is the Cyndy and John Fish Distinguished Professor of Surgery at Brigham and Women's Hospital, the Samuel O. Thier Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School, and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health's Professor of Health Policy and Management.
He is also the founder and chair of Ariadne Labs, a collaborative center for health systems innovation at Brigham and Women"s Hospital and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, as well as Lifebox, a nonprofit organisation dedicated to making surgery safer around the world.
During the coronavirus pandemic, he co-founded CIC Health, which operates COVID-19 testing and vaccination nationally, and served as a member of the Biden transition COVID-19 Advisory Board.
From 2018 to 2020, he was CEO of Haven, the Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan Chase health care venture. He previously served as a senior advisor in the Department of Health and Human Services in the Clinton Administration.
In addition, Gawande has been a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine since 1998.
He is the winner of two National Magazine Awards, Academy Health's Impact Award for highest research impact on health care, a MacArthur Fellowship, and the Lewis Thomas Award for writing about science.
(with inputs from PTI)