Title Page & Abstract
An Interview with Kiran Joshi
Part of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library
Tumultuous 2020 Oral History project
Interview # T20-A-L-2022-40
Kiran Joshi, Senior Medical Officer and Cook County Department of Public Health Co-Lead, was interviewed on the date listed below as part of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library’s Tumultuous 2020 Oral History project.
Interview dates & location:
Date: July 19, 2022
Location: Telephone interview
Interview Format: Digital audio
Interviewer: Amanda Riggenbach, Tumultuous 2020 project manager
Total Time: 1:00 / 1.00 hrs.
Accessioned into the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Archives on August 11, 2022.
The interview is/are archived at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library in Springfield, Illinois.
© 2022 Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum
Abstract
Kiran Joshi, Tumultuous 2020, T20-A-L-2022-40
Biographical Information/Overview of Interview: Kiran Joshi was born in Evergreen Park, Illinois, in 1976. His parents emigrated from India seeking medical care for his mother. They stayed in the United States and Joshi was born five years later. His mother’s medical history and his self-described immigrant values fostered an appreciation for public service in Joshi. After graduating from Hinsdale South High School in 1994, he began attending the University of Illinois at Champaign Urbana, studying Biochemistry. He graduated in 1998 and began Medical School at the University of Illinois at Chicago, graduating in 2003. He interned in internal primary care medicine at Stroger Hospital. He shifted towards family medicine and trained at Illinois Masonic Hospital. He continued looking for opportunities in public health, where he attended a Master of Public Health program at John Hopkins. He worked for the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, in their department of HIV/AIDS, as well as their tobacco prevention center. He consulted for WHO and provided trainings on how to improve hospital medicine in Sub-Saharan Africa. He returned to Chicago and began a residency at Northwestern Family Medicine at Humboldt Park Health as an attending, teaching residents how to deliver high quality medicine. In 2014, he began looking for more public health positions and was selected to become the Senior Medical Officer at the Cook County Department of Public Health.
In April of 2020, the Chief Operating Officer of the public health department was fired. Joshi and his fellow senior medical officer, Dr. Rachel Rubin, were chosen to become co-leads of the public health department. Joshi describes the early stages of the pandemic and how the health department navigated the quick spread of the virus. He details how the units under his leadership (behavioral health, emergency preparedness, and epidemiology) went through the pandemic and how the services of the public health department evolved because of the pandemic. He describes how his duties changed and the way he and Dr. Rubin led the public health department. He concludes by sharing the impact of the pandemic on his personal life.
Subject Headings/Key Words: Tumultuous 2020; Tumultuous 2020 oral history; public health, Cook County Department of Public Health; Chicago, Illinois; suburban cook county; cook county; Kiran Joshi
Notes to the Reader: Readers of the oral history memoir should bear in mind that this is a transcript of the spoken word, and that the interviewer, interviewee and editor sought to preserve the informal, conversational style that is inherent in such historical sources. The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum is not responsible for the factual accuracy of the memoir, nor for the views expressed therein. We leave these for the reader to judge.
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