Community Conversation
with Farooq Mitha
NEHA DEWAN
Neha has long been active in both local and national politics. Most recently, she founded and served as the National Director for South Asians for Biden, an organization dedicated to engaging, educating, and mobilizing the South Asian community to elect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. In 2016, Neha served as the National Co-Chair for South Asians for Hillary and was appointed by Hillary Clinton to the National AAPI Leadership Council.
Previously, in 2015, Neha was appointed as a guest of honor by the Consulate General of India in New York City where she was selected to speak about gender equality for International Women's Day. During the 2012 presidential campaign, Neha chaired the New York Chapter of South Asians for Obama and also served on the steering committee for Lawyers for Obama in New York. For several years, Neha served as an Officer of the New York Democratic Lawyers Council, an organization affiliated with the National Lawyers Council of the Democratic National Committee and comprised of Democratic lawyers and voting rights activists. Similarly, for many years, Neha served as an advisory board member of New Leaders Council, a national organization focused on training and supporting progressive political entrepreneurs. She has also been active in her local community board and political clubs. Neha served as the President of the South Asian Bar Association of New York in 2012, and now sits on the organization’s Board of Directors.
Mobilizing the South Asian Community & Building Political Power
DR. JAY BHATT
Jay Bhatt is a public health physician who has worked at national and local levels to improve outcomes for vulnerable populations, including by strengthening the design and delivery of care and public health.
Currently, Dr. Bhatt is Chief Clinical Product Officer at Medical Home Network and has consulted on COVID-19 response for the Illinois Department of Public Health. Most recently, he served as SVP and Chief Medical Officer at the American Hospital Association as well as President of its subsidiary, the Health Research Educational Trust. He was focused on advancing health reform, health equity and the relationship between public health and health care delivery by translating on the ground experience to policy solutions, convening conversations on strategic issues among C-suite leadership, working to improve quality and safety in healthcare, scaling leading practices and deploying a new model of care for older adults across all fifty states.
Prior to that role, Dr. Bhatt served in Chicago during the Emanuel administration as Managing Deputy Commissioner at the Department of Public Health where he led the implementation of Healthy Chicago, the city's public health agenda, designed nationally recognized scalable approaches to using innovation to save lives, reimagine public health functions for efficiency and impact, and helped clinical teams deploy strategies to address the Ebola epidemic. He is an Aspen Health Innovator Fellow, serves on several community and national boards and an ABC News Medical Contributor. Dr. Bhatt is a National Health Service Corps Scholar, serving as a board certified internal medicine physician in underserved communities in Chicago.
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