WASHINGTON (TIP): U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday, July 13 nominated writer, surgeon and public health expert Atul Gawande to lead global health development at the U.S. Agency for International Development, including for COVID-19, the White House said. Gawande, author of four New York Times best-selling books and a professor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, would serve as the assistant administrator of USAID’s Bureau for Global Health, if confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

His role at USAID will focus on efforts to prevent child and maternal deaths, control the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and combat infectious diseases, such as COVID-19, a White House official said.

Gawande appears to be taking his own advice. Last month, he told advanced degree graduates at Stanford University to be “open to trying stuff – to saying yes” to new opportunities. “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,” Atul Gawande said in a tweet. Atul Gawande is the Cyndy and John Fish Distinguished Professor of Surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Samuel O. Their Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School, and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health.

He is also founder and chair of Ariadne Labs, a joint center for health systems innovation at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, and of Lifebox, a nonprofit organization making surgery safer globally.

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, Mr Gawande has been a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine since 1998. 2He 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.