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Dr. Ashwin Vasan, New York City’s health commissioner, announced Monday that he plans to leave his position in early January.
“It has truly been the honor of my lifetime to serve the city I love, where I started and raised a family for nearly 15 years, and to be your health commissioner, the city’s doctor to 8.3 million fellow New Yorkers,” Vasan said in a statement.
Mayor Eric Adams appointed Vasan to lead the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in late 2021, as the Omicron variant of Covid-19 surged in New York City.
In stepping down, Vasan said he would focus on his family and continue his clinical work and teaching.
“My wife and three young children have served alongside me, bearing the brunt of my absence and shouldering so much,” he said. “I’m grateful for their love and have chosen that now it is time to support them and their well-being. While this was a hard decision, it was the right one for me and my family.”
POLITICO first reported the news of Vasan’s departure.
Vasan’s resignation comes amid turmoil in City Hall. The Adams administration is the target of multiple federal investigations. Earlier this month, federal authorities raided the homes of some of the mayor’s key aides, THE CITY reported. The city’s police commissioner and chief legal counsel have both recently resigned and the deputy commissioner of public private partnerships and economic development has announced her imminent departure.
On Monday, Adams thanked Vasan for guiding the city through multiple public health crises, including the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and the city’s mpox outbreak, and praised his efforts to alleviate medical debt, address mental health issues, and increase life expectancy for New Yorkers.
“I appreciate Dr. Vasan’s decision to stay on through early next year as we transition to a new commissioner, and we are confident that because of his hard work putting into place critical public health initiatives New York City is and will continue to be a safer and healthier place for a long time to come,” Adams said in a statement.
A number of commissioners have churned through the Health Department in recent years. In early 2022, Vasan replaced Dr. Dave A. Chokshi, who had been appointed by then-Mayor Bill de Blasio in the summer of 2020. De Blasio had clashed with his previous health commissioner, Dr. Oxiris Barbot, who resigned roughly five months into the pandemic.
Before taking the helm at the Health Department, Vasan served as the president of Fountain House, a New York-based mental health nonprofit, and as a public health professor at Columbia University. A primary care physician and epidemiologist, he previously worked on health equity and global health issues.
During Vasan’s first summer as commissioner, New York City was at the epicenter of the country’s outbreak of mpox, a close relative of smallpox. The outbreak peaked that summer, with nearly 100 cases of the virus each day.
A chaotic rollout of the mpox vaccine and internal debates at the Health Department over its public messaging about the disease marred the city’s initial public health response. By early 2023, with more than 100,000 New Yorkers vaccinated against mpox, the Health Department declared the outbreak over.
“When I was appointed as New York City health commissioner in December 2021, the Omicron variant of Covid-19 was raging, infecting tens of thousands, taking the lives of New Yorkers, and it was not clear what 2022 had in store for us, including an mpox outbreak followed by New York’s first case of polio in a decade, and all while Covid-19 continued to linger and embed itself in our city,” Vasan said.
Under Vasan, the Health Department launched “HealthyNYC,” a wide-ranging initiative to improve New Yorkers’ life expectancy. The effort focused on reducing chronic disease, fatal overdoses, maternal mortality and other drivers of premature death.
Eliza Fawcett is a reporter covering public health in New York City for Healthbeat. Contact Eliza at efawcett@healthbeat.org .
