Jesse Campagna

Jesse, the greatest dancer, husband, and friend passed on Tuesday, August 22, 2023. It was sudden, tragic, and unexpected, and the world will never be the same without him. Jesse was an aficionado of the awesome, a purveyor of sunshine, fine wines, and acts of service. He was a fearless, passionate advocate for health equity, social justice, and truth. He will continue to amaze and inspire with the detailed, difficult, and often unseen work he did to help others in a short amount of time, and in spite of extreme personal hardships.

Jesse’s work as an epidemiologist in infectious disease, focused on equity, and international health brought him to South Africa, Maryland, Texas, Tennessee, Washington State, and Arizona. He began his career designing and implementing the first multi-drug resistant and extensively drug resistant tuberculosis surveillance system for the Western Cape government of South Africa—it has since expanded to many other provinces and is still in effect today. Jesse also developed Texas’ first statistically valid population estimates of men who have sex with men, leading to a statewide reallocation of more-equitable programming. He was one of the very first public health professionals charged with leading federal and state-level COVID-19 emergency response. Jesse approached his work with the utmost integrity. He was also a generous mentor and teacher—his colleagues describe him as cunning and brilliant—noting that his purposefulness around fighting injustice in the world was matched only by his magnetic, goofy humor.

In spite of many health challenges faced from a young age, Jesse was stubbornly strong and steadfastly resilient in living his life to the very fullest. He was incredibly fortunate to receive two kidney transplants in his lifetime—one from his mother, the other from an angel donor—and in between years of dialysis, was ever-optimistic and courageous. Jesse will also be remembered as having a supernatural proclivity for weird accidents: he infamously broke his elbow when a light pole fell on him while he was walking home in a rainstorm, lost the backs of his teeth while shadow boxing on the Ponte Vecchio bridge in Florence, and was lightly impaled in the back with a broken pool stick at a bar. Jesse had almost as many scars as he did stories.

Jesse never did anything half-way or said anything he didn’t believe. He was the funniest, punniest, smartest, best dancer, true romantic, emotional, endearing, charismatic man. He is widely known to have given the best of hugs. He was equal parts sensitive Italian and world-conquering Leo. Jesse was annoyingly good at everything, and he excelled in his studies in both Physics and Art at Sonoma State University, and later in his Masters of Public Health program in Epidemiology and International Health at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. It should be noted that Jesse also received an award from Wine Spectator for his knowledgeable and illustrious, albeit brief career as a fine dining waiter in Sonoma County.

Jesse is remembered and celebrated by an incredible and expansive network of wonderful humans. The reach of those impacted by his passing is a testament to what a rare, truly exceptional, genuinely loving person he was. Jesse invited and kept the best of company.

Jesse is survived by his wife, Audrey, with whom he shared the last decade of his life. They were deeply in love, and lived their lives together with great care, vision, and hope. If you ask anyone, they will tell you that they made each other the happiest they had ever been. He is also survived by his sister Sierra Campagna, mother Annelise Ecklund, father Bill Campagna, and so many members of his chosen family.

Most recently, Jesse made a lasting impact through his work with the Pascua Yaqui tribe in Tucson, AZ, and they will honor him with a blessing of his soul on September 7. There will be a celebration of his wild, full life on Saturday, September 23rd in Cotati, CA followed by a proper send off at sea the following morning. Donations in honor of his memory can be given to Youth On Their Own (YOTO), a dropout prevention program that supports the high school graduation and continued success of youth experiencing homelessness in Pima County, at: https://yoto.org/donations/.

To the moon and back.