Dr. Ashish Jha is one of the nation’s leading experts on public health, especially pandemic response. He advised both the Trump and Biden administrations on how to deal with COVID-19.

Currently, Jha is dean of the Brown University School of Public Health. He recently delivered a lecture in Fresno as part of the San Joaquin Valley Town Hall series. GV Wire spoke with him for a podcast.

You can listen to the podcast at this link.

On Public Health

GV Wire asked Jha to define public health.

“I think about public health as all those factors and forces that shape the health of individuals and populations. Everything from the environment to the food supply to health policy — there’s a lot of things that end up affecting our health. We always think of health as only about individual choices, but it turns out there are many other things that shape health as well. Public health tries to study all of that and understand what we can do to improve people’s health,” Jha said.

Jha said health “is an incredible enabler of freedom” — something lawmakers should consider.

“You want to avoid things like mandates and requirements and you want to let people make good choices. I always say the goal of public health is not to tell people what to do, it’s to help people make better decisions,” Jha said.

Looking Back at COVID

Jha said some choices were right and some were not during the COVID reaction.

“You’re always trading off, in the middle of a pandemic, things like health security and making sure our hospitals are not overwhelmed, but also making sure that people are living their lives as normally as possible,” Jha said.

One thing public health experts and lawmakers got wrong was closing schools.

“It was very clear from the data that school closures were going to have a big negative effect on kids, and they probably weren’t doing much to protect us,” Jha said. “Schools should be the last things to close and the first things to open.”

Jha said the top success was Operation Warp Speed, which accelerated vaccine development.

He also acknowledged that politics will always play a role in public health policy.

“I’m not a politician. I’m a physician. I am a public health expert. My job is to give the best scientific advice I can — and then the political leaders will use that as they will,” Jha said.

‘Bobby Kennedy Doesn’t Understand Science Behind Vaccines’

California, along with Washington, Oregon and Hawai’i, formed the West Coast Health Alliance, empowering its state health agencies to formulate medical opinions on issues like vaccines.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed AB 144, which purposely foregoes any federal recommendation in favor of the state. Several critics are concerned about the effects on vaccine schedules and personal freedom to make medical choices.

Jha has mixed views.

“There is absolutely a risk of confusion when you see states splintering from the federal government. Unfortunately, in this case — and this is not a partisan issue in my mind — vaccines have always been super bipartisan,” Jha said.

“We have somebody in the health department and in the U.S. government, Bobby Kennedy, who doesn’t understand the science behind vaccines. He is making a series of decisions that I think are incredibly harmful,” Jha said.

“The alternative is to agree to something that everybody in medicine and public health knows is wrong. And that’s not the right thing,” Jha said.

Ultimately, Jha said, people should talk to their doctor.

Air Quality and Children

Jha’s Clovis lecture focused on how air quality affects schoolchildren.

“One of the things that’s been really just upsetting to me is watching how many kids go to school but then they can’t go play outside during recess because the air quality is so bad. That’s terrible, and we shouldn’t accept that as a country,” Jha said.

Jha said it is a difficult balance between the benefits of playing outdoors and poor air quality.

“There are no easy solutions here. I actually think that instead of forcing schools to figure out how to do this trade-off, this is something communities should focus on,” Jha said.