Dr. Ashish Joshi named Dean of the School of Public Health at the UofM
March 2, 2022 — Dr. Ashish Joshi has been named dean of the School of Public Health at the University of Memphis, effective Aug. 1.
Joshi is currently senior associate dean of Academic and Student Affairs and professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy-New York. He joined CUNY in 2014 as a founding assistant dean of student affairs. In 2016, he was promoted to associate dean of Student and Alumni Affairs. He was appointed to his current position in 2018.
Joshi continues to pursue his passion for research, scholarly work and innovative and entrepreneurial initiatives as he is the principal investigator and co-investigator on several research projects funded by the city, state, National Institute of Health and other international foundations and scientific agencies.
He has participated in global health projects in India, Haiti, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Brazil and Egypt. Joshi has successfully implemented nearly two dozen health technological interventions in areas of population surveillance, m-health interventions, consumer health informatics and population health dashboards globally.
Joshi conceptualized the SMAART (Sustainable, Multisector, Accessible, Affordable, Reimbursable and Tailored) model using combined principles of the human-centered approach humanistic, behavioral, learning and information processing theory to advance the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals. He has presented his work at the World Health Organization, United Nations and several other government agencies worldwide.
He was recently funded through the Open Society Foundation to establish the first-of-its-kind Population Health Informatics Regional Hub at the James P. Grant School of Public Health, BRAC University Bangladesh. The hub’s goal is to train students with population health informatics skills so that data and research capacity can be enhanced among the various public health practitioners in Bangladesh and other countries in the region.
Born in India, the 46-year-old is an educator, researcher, practitioner, mentor, innovator and entrepreneur. Before joining CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy, Joshi was an associate professor at the Department of Health Services Research and Administration at the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s College of Public Health.
He has published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles in the area of population health informatics and designs, develops and implements technological innovations and interventions at the intersection of clinical care and population health to enhance good health and well-being of individuals, their family members and the communities they live in.
Joshi is the primary author of the first book globally on “Population Health Informatics: Driving Evidence-Based Solutions into Practice.” He is chair of the Global Health Informatics Working Group at the American Medical Informatics Association and has been elected to be a member of the DEI committee of the American Medical Informatics Association.
Joshi has been actively engaged in the response to COVID-19 in New York City as well as in other parts of the world. He led CUNY SPH collaboration with the Housing Recovery Office of the Mayor of New York City to secure a nearly $10 million grant to contribute towards the implementation of the City’s innovative Resource Navigator Test and Trace Program. Leading the CUNY SPH efforts to respond to this initiative required urgent build-up of the program to support the needs of the individuals and the communities impacted by COVID-19 in New York City. Apart from assisting the communities, it also required collaboration and coordination with city agencies and city-wide community-based organizations to ensure that individuals are connected to the community resources that they need.
Joshi received a bachelor’s degree in medicine and surgery from Punjabi University in India. He also received a Master of Public Health from Boston University and a PhD in health informatics from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.