Challenges Facing New Oregon Health Authority Director Sejal Hathi
On the job since January 2024, Sejal Hathi M.D. is now the fourth leader of the Oregon Health Authority in roughly a year. In charge of a $17 billion annual budget and just under 5,000 staff members, Hathi left the New Jersey Department of Health after four months as deputy commissioner of public health services in order to assume the OHA director role. Before her work in New Jersey, Hathi worked as an advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, was on the faculty at Harvard and John Hopkins universities and served as a public health policy adviser to President Joe Biden.
During media interviews Hathi said she expects to spend her first weeks or even months meeting with doctors, nurses, social workers, peer specialists and community-based organizations to ask them what the agency should be doing that it’s not doing and what needs to be expanded to improve health care in the state.
{Cohort Oregon} 2024-CT-OR-102