Prabhjot Singh is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Health System Design and Global Health and Medicine at the Mount Sinai Health System and Icahn School of Medicine, as well as Special Advisor for Strategy and Design at the Peterson Center for Healthcare. Previously, he served as Director of the Arnhold Institute and Chair of the Department of Health System Design & Global Health and he was a visiting assistant professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University and Director of Systems Design at the Earth Institute, where he co-chaired the One Million Community Health Worker Campaign. Throughout his career, he has focused on how advances in community health systems globally can improve health in America. In 2018, he was interviewed about his work on Amanpour & Co on PBS/CNN International. He is the author of Dying and Living in the Neighborhood: A Street-Level View of America's Healthcare Promise, which has been enthusiastically reviewed by leaders in healthcare, economics, policy and readers for its narrative style and pragmatic approach. His next books will focus on how to deliver health care to remote, “Last Mile” regions, and how to invest in better health care. In 2018, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation announced that he was elected to their Board of Trustees. Dr. Singh is also a committed social advocate, who has written about issues related to hate crimes, building more resilient communities, and equal opportunity to work. He was attacked in a 2013 hate crime that received extensive local, national and international press, both for the attack itself as well as his response. In 2017, he provided testimony to the United States Senate Judiciary Committee on the rising incidence of religious hate crimes.
Early life and education
Prabhjot Singh emigrated from Nairobi, Kenya with his family, and has lived in Okemos, Michigan, Chalfont, Pennsylvania as well as in Rochester and New York City, New York. Singh completed a BA & BS in Biology at University of Rochester, where he graduated magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa and earned a Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship. He went on to pursue a combined MD/PhD at Weill Cornell Medical CollegeRockefeller University, with a Post-Doctoral fellowship in Sustainable Development at Columbia University, supported by a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship, NIH Medical Scientist Training Program Fellowship. He completed his clinical training in Internal Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, and the James J. Peters VA Medical Center in the Bronx. As he was completing his clinical training, he was recognized as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation 40th Anniversary Young Leader for his work on adapting global insights into health system design to domestic contexts. He gave a TEDx talk on the topic in 2010, and at Mayo Transform in 2014.
Career
Previously, Dr. Singh was an assistant professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University and Director of Systems Design at The Earth Institute. In 2013, he co-founded the with Jeffrey Sachs, which is an initiative of the African Union and UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. In 2015, he was named inaugural Director of the Arnhold institute for Global Health at Mount Sinai, as well as Vice Chairman of medicine for Population. The Arnhold Institute was supported with a gift of $27.5 million, and in 2016, his Arnhold Institute team, in partnership with the UN Special Envoy for Health In Agenda 2030 and partners, launched Atlas, which leverages satellite technologies to create a new generation of spatial information systems that push intelligence to frontline health care workers in information poor regions. This software has yet to be deployed or used by any frontline health care workers. Domestically, in his role as Vice Chairman of Medicine for Population Health, Dr. Singh supported the development of a primary care practice transformation team in partnership with health system leaders. Singh is the founding technical lead of City Health Works, a social enterprise founded and directed by his wife, Manmeet Kaur,that is building a financially sustainable and scalable platform for health coaches to improve the outcomes and decrease the costs of care for high need patients. Dr. Singh has a particular interest in developing the capacity for intermediaries to form bridges between healthcare and social care. In 2016, the Mount Sinai Health System Dean, CEO and Board of Trustees approved the creation of the Department of Health System Design and Global Health, which Dr. Singh chairs. He also serves on the National Academy of Medicine’s forum on Aging, Independence and Disability, as well as the National Quality Forum’s taskforce on the impact of housing instability and food insecurity on health. He is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. In 2017, he became a Presidential Leadership Scholar and in 2018, he became a Fellow of the Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University. His work has been featured in The Lancet, The New England Journal of Medicine, Brookings Institution Economic Studies, and Health Affairs, as well as by media outlets such as NPR and the New York Times.
Social advocacy
Dr. Singh has written about issues related to hate crimes, building more resilient communities, and equal opportunity to work. He was attacked in a 2013 hate crime that received extensive local, national and international press, both for the attack itself as well as his response. The LA Times, Christian Science Monitor, The Guardian and Al Jazeera have cited him on Sikhs in America. In 2014, Columbia University Magazine wrote a feature story about Prabhjot Singh and Manmeet Kaur's relationship, work in healthcare, and social activism. He serves on the Board of Directors for the Auburn Seminary and Kaur Life.
Book
Dr. Singh's first book is entitled Dying and Living in the Neighborhood: A Street-Level View of America's Healthcare Promise, which focuses on how his view of American healthcare as a medical resident was influenced by his work on more sophisticated community health systems abroad.
2019 Lawsuit
In April 2019, Dr. Singh was named as a defendant in a lawsuit along with 3 other men, Dennis S. Charney, Dean of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Bruno Silva and David Berman, and Mount Sinai Health System by seven women and one man for sex and age discrimination. An internal review, conducted by the Mount Sinai Human Resource and Legal departments prior to the filing of this lawsuit, into the management practices at the global health institute and the behavior of the plaintiffs reported found no evidence to support accusations of sexism or ageism. This report was contested by the plaintiffs and the lack of response by Mount Sinai resulted in filing of the federal case against Singh et al in April 2019. The claims in the lawsuit focused on Dr Singh’s alleged acts of age, sex and gender discrimination. In early July 2019, Dr. Singh, as a result of the lawsuit, stepped down from his positions as Chairman of the Arnhold Institute for Global Health and chairman of the department of health system design and global health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where he remains on the faculty. On August 8, 2019 plaintiffs in the case released an Amended Complaint detailing new claims that bolster the previous allegations regarding Singh’s discriminatory behavior at AIGH and how this was reinforced by the overall climate at the Icahn School, including a set of charges that included additional allegations of discrimination and also allegations of fraud and misrepresentation with respect to grants from USAID and the Commonwealth Foundation. The amended complaint also indicates that hundreds of alumni, current students, and current employees at the medical school have signed open letters to Mount Sinai’s Board of Trustees supporting the Plaintiffs' allegations of mistreatment and asking for action to change the harsh, “top-down” culture. The lawsuit is currently awaiting review in the District Court for the Southern District of New York.
