Dr. Ashish Jha
White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator
Ashish Kumar Jha was born in December 1970 in Madhubani, Bihar, India. The family moved to Canada in 1979 and to New Jersey five years later. He studied pre-med at Columbia University and received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School. He trained as a resident in internal medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.
During the George W. Bush administration, he served as the Inaugural Under Secretary’s Special Fellow for Quality and Safety in the Department of Veterans Affairs. He completed a fellowship in general medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital at Harvard. He also completed a Master of Public Health degree at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He was a professor at that school and the Faculty Director of the Harvard Global Health Institute. He later became Dean of the Brown University School of Public Health.
In 2020 and 2021, he served on the National Advisory Council for COVID Collaborative. He was named as the White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator in March 2022.
He is married to Debra Stump, an environmental lawyer.
In the News…
White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha said that onerous lockdown policies like those being instituted in China are unlikely to work and should not be a model for nations like the U.S.
“We don’t think that this zero-COVID strategy that China is pursuing is one that is likely to work,” he said. “I think it’s very difficult at this point with a highly contagious variant to be able to curtail this through lockdowns.”
China’s city of Shanghai, with a population of more than 25 million, has been locked down since last month and only last week began to ease restrictions. However, such intensive measures are increasing in Guangdong province.
Dr. Jha said the focus of President Biden’s administration continues to be on vaccinations, boosters, and making treatments for Covid-19 available. To that end, he also urged Congress to take up a multibillion-dollar funding package upon its return from recess later this month.
“My hope is that they picked this issue up right away and make sure that we get funding to the American people, so that we can ensure the treatment, vaccines, tests, all continue to be available.”
Contact this Leader…
Did you pray for Dr. Jha today? You can let him know at:
Dr. Ashish Jha
White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator
1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20500
