Ashwin Vasan | |
---|---|
Commissioner of the New York City Department of Health | |
Assumed office March 15, 2022 | |
Mayor | Eric Adams |
Preceded by | Dave A. Chokshi |
Personal details | |
Born | November 15, 1980 |
Residence(s) | Brooklyn, New York, U.S. |
Education | University of California, Los Angeles (BA) Harvard University (ScM) University of Michigan (MD) London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (PhD) |
Ashwin Vasan (born November 15, 1980) is an American physician, epidemiologist, and health and human services leader, serving as the 44th commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.[1][2] Vasan is also a public health professor and practicing primary care doctor at Columbia University, and was recently the president and CEO of Fountain House, a national mental health nonprofit.[3][4]
Education
A native of Chicago, with roots in Chennai, India, Vasan earned a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2001, a Master of Science in Epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health in 2004. He graduated from University of Michigan Medical School in 2011, completed a PhD from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine in 2015,[5] and completed his medical training in internal medicine at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.
Career
Ashwin Vasan started his career in global health, working on HIV/AIDS, specifically, access to antiretroviral therapy in developing countries. He worked with Partners In Health (PIH) in Boston, before moving to the Department of HIV/AIDS at the World Health Organization, where he worked under Dr. Jim Yong Kim on the “3by5” Initiative to expand access to HIV treatment, spending time in Switzerland, rural Uganda, Lesotho and Rwanda, with PIH once again. [6] After completing his internal medicine training at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, in 2014 Vasan joined the faculty of the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, and the Department of Medicine at Columbia’s Vagelos College of Physicians & Surgeons, where he works as an assistant professor of clinical population and family health and medicine, and taught courses in global health, implementation science, and policy.[5] Vasan practices primary care medicine at Columbia University Irving Medical Center.
In 2016, Vasan was appointed to serve as the founding executive director of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene's[7] Health Access Equity Unit, a city-wide initiative aimed at improving the health and social welfare of marginalized communities in New York City.[8]
In 2019, Vasan was named president and CEO of Fountain House, a national mental health nonprofit that provides employment, education, housing, health and wellness programs to the mentally ill.[9] Fountain House is notable for creating the Clubhouse model of psychosocial rehabilitation, which has been replicated in over 300 locations in 30 countries.[7] During his tenure, Vasan grew the organization from a local New York-based nonprofit to a national organization, supporting eight markets, and establishing a policy office based in Washington, DC, working on mental health reform, including funding for community based mental health systems and mental health crisis response. During his tenure the organization nearly doubled in revenue, including transformative new gifts from MacKenzie Scott and the Ford Foundation, amongst others. He was appointed as Health Commissioner of New York City on December 21, 2021.
As Commissioner, Vasan has led a re-envisioning of the Department and the City’s public health planning, focusing on stopping and reversing declines in life expectancy in NYC, which have been severe in NYC and the nation the wake of COVID-19 and parallel pandemics, culminating with the launch of HealthyNYC, the city’s population health agenda aiming to reach its highest life expectancy of 83 years by 2030. A local law was passed to ensure HealthyNYC is a permanent feature of citywide planning, spanning across administrations and updated every five years, and Vasan has proposed the program as a model for the nation, which has experienced a decade-long stagnation and decline in lifespan and healthspan.
In doing so he has centered mental health (focusing on youth, SMI, and overdoses), launching a comprehensive citywide mental health agenda Care, Community, Action: A Mental Health Plan for NYC and restructured the Agency around other key strategic priorities and contributors to declining life expectancy (chronic diseases, women’s health and birth equity, violence prevention, and climate change), while shifting the agency culture and process towards response readiness, preparedness, managing health emergencies, especially infectious diseases and strengthening its data systems. He has also focused on health care access and affordability, leading a program to cancel $2 billion in medical debt for 500,000 low income New Yorkers, and under his leadership, the Department has launched an Office of Healthcare Accountability, aiming to improve transparency around healthcare prices.
Under Vasan’s leadership the Department has also led a nation-leading response to reproductive health after the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Dobbs case, launching the nation’s first public sector Abortion Access Hub, where people from all across the U.S. and especially in states in new restrictions on abortion, can call and be navigated and supported to attain necessary reproductive health and abortion care in New York City, and becoming the first city to offer medication abortion at its public health clinics, in addition to telehealth access.
Vasan began his tenure toward the end of the Omicron wave of COVID-19, during which he served as the Senior Public Health Advisor in City Hall and steered administration strategy on vaccination, testing, and new treatments, where the city developed the first-in-the-nation telehealth and home delivery program for Paxlovid.
Vasan led NYC’s response to the mpox outbreak in summer 2022, with the city the epicenter of the North American outbreak. The Health Department was the first in the nation to launch MPOX vaccination clinics in June 2022 for “extended Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis”, doing so under extreme national vaccine supply constraints. These clinics, and the close partnership with community leaders, advocates, and providers, led the nation and pushed the federal government to launch a national mpox response and vaccination strategy just a few weeks later in early July 2022. New York City vaccinated over 100,000 people in the 2022 mpox outbreak, and within weeks cases dramatically declined and the end of the outbreak was eventually declared in early 2023.
Vasan’s writing and quotations as a public health and mental health expert in national and international publications including CNN,[10] The New York Times,[11] NPR,[12] CBS News,[13] USA Today,[14] The Guardian,[15] Forbes,[16] WNYC,[17] Al Jazeera,[18] today.com,[19] and Insider.[20] He was also the subject of a Lancet profile outlining his agenda for improving health in NYC.
He has also served on the boards of the Greater New York Hospital Association, NYC Health+Hospitals, New York Academy of Medicine, Public Health Solutions, The Fund for Public Health for NYC, Transportation Alternatives, inseparable, and Forward Majority.[9] Vasan was also a member of the City & State advisory board until assuming his current role as NYC Health Commissioner, and has worked on multiple local, state, and national political campaigns as a health policy advisor.
On September 23, 2024, amid numerous ongoing investigations into Mayor Adams and his administration, and prior to the Mayor's direct indictment on September 25, 2024, Vasan announced that he will resign from his position as NYC Health Commissioner in early January 2025 after a nearly three year term, citing family reasons, and with confirmation that Vasan is not subject to any involvement in the ongoing federal case. In an interview with the New York Times, Vasan is quoted as saying ""“I’m so far away from that world, and my focus has been on the health of the city,” Dr. Vasan said of the investigations. “I don’t think anyone wants to see that kind of environment around us, because we want our mayor and the administration to be successful, because we want the city to be successful.”"[21][22]
Personal life
Vasan lives in Brooklyn with his wife and three kids.[7]
See also
References
- ^ Fitzsimmons, Emma G. (22 December 2021). "Mental Health Expert Will Lead New York's Pandemic Response". The New York Times.
- ^ Lewis, Caroline (2021-07-15). "Inside NYC's Original Social Club For Mental Health". Gothamist. Retrieved 2021-07-18.
- ^ ""This is going to compound your problems": Coronavirus poses new challenge for many with mental illness". www.cbsnews.com. Retrieved 2021-06-07.
- ^ Ruiz, Rebecca (2020-10-18). "COVID-19 proves that suicide is much more than a personal struggle". Mashable. Retrieved 2021-07-18.
- ^ a b "Ashwin Vasan | Columbia Public Health". www.publichealth.columbia.edu. Retrieved 2021-06-07.
- ^ "Alumni News and Features". alumni.sph.harvard.edu. Retrieved 2021-06-07.
- ^ a b c "The 2021 Nonprofit Power 100: 51-100". City & State NY. 2021-02-19. Retrieved 2021-06-07.
- ^ "Ashwin Vasan, MD at CUMC/Presbyterian Hospital and Vanderbilt Clinic: Internal Medicine | NewYork-Presbyterian Doctor in New York, NY". doctors.nyp.org. Retrieved 2021-06-07.
- ^ a b Ortega, Ralph; Huggins Salomon, Sheryl (2021-03-08). "City & State names first advisory board". City & State NY. Retrieved 2021-06-07.
- ^ Ward, Vicky. "How the very rich are different in the Covid-19 fight". CNN. Retrieved 2021-07-18.
- ^ Valentino-DeVries, Jennifer; Lu, Denise; Dance, Gabriel J. X. (2020-04-03). "Location Data Says It All: Staying at Home During Coronavirus Is a Luxury". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-07-18.
- ^ "How To Be Alone, But Not Lonely, Despite The Coronavirus". NPR.org. Retrieved 2021-07-18.
- ^ ""This is going to compound your problems": Coronavirus poses new challenge for many with mental illness". www.cbsnews.com. Retrieved 2021-07-18.
- ^ "It's Working in Eugene, Olympia, Denver: More Cities Are Sending Civilian Responders, Not Police, on Mental Health Calls". www.usatoday.com. Retrieved 2021-07-18.
- ^ "'It's chaotic': New York street partying fuels fears of coronavirus resurgence". the Guardian. 2020-07-23. Retrieved 2021-07-18.
- ^ Dangor, Graison. "Mental Health Advocates Say These Things Need To Change No Matter Who Wins The Election". Forbes. Retrieved 2021-07-18.
- ^ "Mentally Ill While Black | The Brian Lehrer Show". WNYC. Retrieved 2021-07-18.
- ^ Piven, Ben. "Excitement and anxiety on eve of New York City reopening". www.aljazeera.com. Retrieved 2021-07-18.
- ^ "Is it safe to go to the beach? Experts answer 5 important questions". today.com. Retrieved 2021-07-18.
- ^ Berman, Jenifer. "Companies have an opportunity to provide meaningful help to employees coping with mental health issues". Business Insider. Retrieved 2021-07-18.
- ^ Vasan, Ashwin (September 23, 2024). "NYC HEALTH COMMISSIONER DR. ASHWIN VASAN ON TENURE AT THE NYC HEALTH DEPARTMENT" (PDF). NEW YORK CITY DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND MENTAL HYGIENE.
- ^ Mays, Jeffery (September 23, 2024). "As Investigations Swirl, Another Adams Official Resigns". The New York Times.
- Commissioners of Health of the City of New York
- Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health faculty
- University of California, Los Angeles alumni
- Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health alumni
- University of Michigan Medical School alumni
- Alumni of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
- Living people
- 1980 births
- American physicians of Indian descent