Ashish Jha

A personable, highly effective communicator, Jha became a media darling for his down-to-earth commentary on the Covid-19 pandemic. Then, in March 2022, he took leave from his post as dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health to help the White House manage its pandemic response at a time when fast-spreading variants continued to pose a major public health threat even as many Americans moved away from restrictions. In Washington, Jha has focused on promoting Covid-19 countermeasures such as bivalent booster shots, free at-home tests, and free masks for use in crowded public settings. “We are now at a point where I believe if you’re up to date on your vaccines, you have access to treatments … there really should be no restrictions on people’s activities,” Jha said at a STAT summit in November. “I’m pretty much living life the way I was living life in 2019.”