Atul Atmaram Gawande (born November 5, 1965) is an American surgeon, writer, and public health researcher.

On December 17, 2021, he was confirmed as the Assistant Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development, and he was sworn in on January 4, 2022.

Gawande was born on November 5, 1965,[4] in Brooklyn, New York, to Marathi Indian immigrants to the United States, both doctors.

[10] He worked as a health-care researcher for Representative Jim Cooper (D-TN), who was author of a "managed competition" health care proposal for the Conservative Democratic Forum.

[11] Gawande entered medical school in 1990 – leaving after two years to become Bill Clinton's healthcare lieutenant during the 1992 campaign.

He directed one of the three committees of the Clinton administration's Task Force on National Health Care Reform, supervising 75 people and defined the benefits packages for Americans and subsidies and requirements for employers.

Its real value lies in encouraging communication among teams and stimulating further reform to bring a culture of safety to the very centre of patients' care.

Using the town of McAllen, Texas, as an example, it argued that a corporate, profit-maximizing culture (which can provide substantial amounts of unnecessary care) was an important factor in driving up costs, unlike a culture of low-cost high-quality care as provided by the Mayo Clinic and other efficient health systems.

[22] Gawande published his first book, Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science, containing revised versions of 14 of his articles for Slate and The New Yorker, in 2002.

The book strives to present multiple sides of contentious medical issues, such as malpractice law in the US, physicians' role in capital punishment, and treatment variation between hospitals.

It discusses end of life choices about assisted living and the effect of medical procedures on terminally ill people.

[33] On July 13, 2021, President Biden nominated Gawande for the post of Assistant Administrator of U.S. AID for the Bureau of Global Health.

"[35] Senator Rubio's statement stems from a 1998 article Gawande wrote defending particular methods of late-term abortion and post-delivery infanticide.

[39] In 2007, he became director of the World Health Organization's effort to reduce surgical deaths,[40] and in 2009 he was elected a Hastings Center Fellow.

[44] In 2014, he presented the BBC's annual radio Reith Lectures, delivering a series of four talks titled The Future of Medicine.