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Please join us for a special event to mark National Public Health Week, featuring New York State Health Commissioner Dr. Mary Bassett and New York City Health Commissioner Dr. Ashwin Vasan. The talk will be moderated by CUNY SPH Dean Ayman El-Mohandes.
Dr. Mary Bassett
New York State Health Commissioner
Mary T. Bassett, M.D., M.P.H., was appointed Acting Commissioner of Health on December 1, 2021 and confirmed by the New York State Senate on January 20, 2022.
She previously served as Director of the François-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University and FXB Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights in the department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Prior to that, she served as Commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Director for the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation’s African Health Initiative and Child Well-Being Prevention Program; and as Deputy Commissioner of Health Promotion and Disease Prevention at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
Early in her career, Dr. Bassett served on the medical faculty at the University of Zimbabwe and went on to serve as Associate Director of Health Equity at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Southern Africa Office. After returning to the United States, she served on the faculty of Columbia University, including as Associate Professor of Clinical Epidemiology in the Mailman School of Public Health. Dr. Bassett received a B.A. in History and Science from Harvard University, an M.D. from Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, and an M.P.H. from the University of Washington.
Dr. Ashwin Vasan
New York City Health Commissioner
Ashwin Vasan, ScM, MD, PhD is a primary care physician, epidemiologist and public health expert with nearly 20 years of experience working to improve health (mental+physical), social welfare, and public policy for vulnerable populations. As of March 2022, he began his tenure as the 44th Commissioner of the New York City Department of Health & Mental Hygiene, where he will focus on ongoing management of and recovery from COVID-19, establishing innovative population mental health approaches, revitalizing the agency’s storied work on chronic disease prevention and health equity, and capturing momentum to strengthen the public health business model for the 21st Century.
Since 2014 he has been on the faculty at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health in the Department of Population & Family Health, focusing on implementation science and global health, and at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, where he cares for low-income, Medicaid/Medicare, or uninsured patients from Washington Heights, Harlem, and the South Bronx as a primary care internist at Columbia University Irving Medical Center/NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. Most recently he was President & CEO of Fountain House, one of the world’s oldest and largest community-based mental health and public health charities focusing on the intersecting health and social needs of people most impacted by mental illness.
Dr. Vasan spent nearly a decade working at the intersection of global health, HIV, and primary care working with Partners In Health (PIH) in Rwanda, Lesotho, and Boston, and the World Health Organization in Uganda and Geneva (under former World Bank President Jim Yong Kim). Dr Vasan worked as a Technical Officer on the WHO/UNAIDS “3by5 Initiative” to expand HIV treatment access in the developing world, and then supported the Ugandan government in scale-up and quality improvement of HIV treatment in four districts in the southwest of the country, the first areas to attempt front-line treatment.
