Jasjit S Ahluwalia, MD, MPH, MS is a physician and population health/public health scientist who is passionate about mentoring. He has been in academic medicine since 1992 and has been a practicing physician, faculty member, department chair, Associate Dean and Center Director in medical schools, and recently, served as a School of Public Health Dean. He has a broad interest in minority health, health disparities, the social determinants of health, addiction, and cancer prevention. His primary research has focused on nicotine addiction and smoking cessation in African-American smokers. His work has extended to harm reduction with the use of e-cigarettes in Latinx and African American combustible tobacco users. In addition, he is engaged in global health efforts with research projects and colleagues in Spain, and in Mumbai and New Delhi, India.
He has been the PI of $23 million and Co-I of over $115 million in extramural grants, and has published more than 400 manuscripts. Additionally, Ahluwalia served as the inaugural chair of a charted NIH study section titled, Health Disparities and Equity Promotion, and in 2014, completed a 3-year term on the NIH/DHHS/NIMHD National Advisory Council on Minority Health and Health Disparities, for which he served as chair during the last year of his term. In 2019, he completed a 3-year term on the Board of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco (SRNT). In this same year, he was appointed by the Secretary of DHHS to the Interagency Committeee of Smoking and Health for a three year term chaired by the US Surgeon General.
Among other honors, Ahluwalia received the Society of Behavioral Medicine’s national award for his excellence in mentoring, the Herbert W. Nickens award from the Society of General Internal Medicine for national leadership and research in improving minority health, and a lifetime leadership award from the American Public Health Association for his work on tobacco. He has been a member of the boards of directors of the Society of Behavioral Medicine, the Society of General Internal Medicine, the Association for Clinical and Translational Science, and most recently on the board for the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco.
Ahluwalia received his undergraduate degree at New York University and a combined MD/MPH from the Tulane University Schools of Medicine and Public Health and Tropical Medicine. During a two-year fellowship at Harvard, he studied clinical epidemiology, trained in clinical research, and earned an MS in health policy from its T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
In 1992, Ahluwalia joined Emory University School of Medicine and Rollins School of Public Health as an assistant professor of medicine and health policy. He then spent 8 years at the Department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health at the University of Kansas Medical Center where he served as chair and the Sosland Family Endowed Chair.
In 2005, he relocated to University of Minnesota to establish the Office of Clinical Research, to increase the stature of clinical and translational research across the six health science schools; Medicine, Public Health, Pharmacy, Veterinary Medicine, Nursing and Dentistry. The office evolved into the NIH funded University of Minnesota Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute (funded by a NIH CTSA $55 million grant), for which he served as Associate Director leading clinical research training and career development for undergraduates, graduate students, fellows and junior faculty. In 2009, he was awarded a $6 million NIH P60 center grant which led to the establishment of the Center for Health Equity. In 2015, he became Dean of the Rutgers School of Public Health and in September 2017, joined the Brown University School of Public Health as a tenured Professor and will focus on research, mentoring, and teaching graduate and undergraduate students. Dr. Ahluwalia serves as the Deputy Director of CADRE, a $12.5 million 5-year NIH center of excellence grant which was launched in 2019, which has been renewed in 2024 for another 5 years.
Dr. Ahluwalia’s strength and track record lies in building and growing programs, leveraging through collaboration, inspiring others to work in teams, a passion for excellence, strong leadership skills, proven administrative experience, strategic planning, executing transformational culture change, and the ability to create an atmosphere that nurtures, values, and celebrates diversity.
