WASHINGTON — The White House is so troubled by the failure of outside groups to promote the health care plan backed by President Donald Trump that a senior aide is being dispatched to rectify the situation.

Katie Walsh, a longtime top lieutenant to chief of staff Reince Priebus, is leaving the administration to join the nonprofit group America First Policies.

It’s one of three separate nonprofits stocked with former Trump advisers that say they want to promote the president’s agenda. Yet all were noticeably absent during the heated battle over Trump’s first legislative agenda item, repealing and replacing the nation’s health care law. The proposal was pronounced dead on Friday.

“It was abundantly clear that we didn’t have air cover when it came to calls coming into lawmakers,” Priebus said. “No one can fix this problem better than Katie.”

No one else is joining Walsh in leaving the White House, spokesman Sean Spicer said.

Walsh, White House deputy chief of staff, is joining America First Policies as a senior strategist. She’s a longtime political operative and was among many in the Trump administration who noticed with irritation that pro-Trump groups weren’t engaged in the fight over health care.

She decided over the weekend that she could better help Trump on the outside and said she was “excited” to continue pressing his agenda.

The White House is not allowed to direct the outside groups on what to do; those groups typically use public statements by the president and others to determine how to use their resources.

“Katie Walsh was instrumental in the victory in November,” said senior White House adviser Jared Kushner. “There is no one better suited to fulfill this role than Katie.”

The health care bill’s conservative opponents benefited from well-funded political and policy groups to drive home their message with voters.

For example, Americans for Prosperity, part of a conservative network backed by billionaires Charles and David Koch, vowed to spend more than $1 million fighting any lawmakers who would vote for it. Lack of Republican buy-in doomed the bill.

Leaders for some of the Trump groups said they viewed backing the legislation as a problem for Congress, not the White House.