The Aspen Institute

Dr. Ashwin Vasan is a physician, epidemiologist, public health professor at Columbia University, and the 44th New York City Health Commissioner from Jan 2022-2025. With an annual budget of more than $2 billion and more than 7,000 employees throughout the five boroughs, The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene is one of the largest, strongest, and most historic public health agencies in the world. During Dr. Vasan’s tenure, while leading the city out of the pandemic and confronting new challenges including the 2022 mpox outbreak, he reshaped and reoriented the city’s public health system to take on the challenge of falling life expectancy, embodied in their signature initiative HealthyNYC which aims for healthier, longer lives for all New Yorkers, with a focus on closing inequities. In doing so, he led transformative investments in community and digital mental health, abortion, reproductive healthcare access, and maternal health, healthcare affordability and accessiblity including relief of $2B of medical debt for 500,000 low income people, all while strengthening internal infrastructure and workforce readiness for the next pandemic. Previously he was the CEO of Fountain House, a national mental health nonprofit providing health and human service supports to people with serious mental illness, and spent the first decade of his career in global health and HIV/AIDS with Partners In Health and the World Health Organization.