Dr. Pritesh Gandhi currently serves as the Chief Medical Officer at the Department of Homeland Security, as appointed by President Biden in January 2021. In this role, he serves as the principle advisor to the DHS Secretary, Assistant Secretary for the Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction (CWMD), the FEMA Administrator, and DHS senior leadership on medical and public health issues related to natural disasters, border health, pandemic response, acts of terrorism, and other man-made disasters.

Dr. Gandhi is a public health trained and board-certified internal medicine specialist. He most recently served as the Associate Chief Medical Officer and Director of Adult Medicine at People’s Community Clinic, an Austin-based federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) which provides care to over 20,000 uninsured and medically underserved Central Texans, 70% of whom live under the federal poverty line. He co-led the COVID-19 response team and under his clinical leadership People’s Community Clinic was recognized by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services as a Gold Tier Health Center Quality Leader— ranking it among the top 10% of public health providers in the Nation. Dr. Gandhi recently served as an affiliate faculty at the University of Texas at Austin Dell Medical School.

Over the course of his career, Dr. Gandhi has worked with working-class and marginalized communities to address social determinants of health and poverty. He is a Fulbright Scholar, Schweitzer Fellow, National Health Service Corps Scholar, and was named a Presidential Leadership Scholar in 2018. Dr. Gandhi completed a dual internal medicine and pediatrics residency at Tulane University in New Orleans and holds a degree in International Relations & Economics from Tufts University where he also completed his MD and MPH.