Rear Adm. Bruce Gillingham, surgeon general of the U.S. Navy, will keynote an upcoming Potomac Officers Club event to set the stage for a discussion of the country’s pandemic response and resilience initiatives.
Gillingham was confirmed to the post in October 2019 and is dual-hatted as chief of the Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery. He has held various roles throughout Navy Medicine, including the directorship of Pediatric Orthopedic and Scoliosis Surgery, Orthopedic Residency Program and Surgical Services.
The orthopedic surgeon helped establish the Naval Medical Center San Diego’s Comprehensive Combat and Complex Casualty Care Center, one of the three Department of Defense hospitals that provide rehabilitation care services to military personnel who are severely ill or injured.
Some of his achievements while working on the ground include achieving a 98 percent combat casualty survival rate during the highest point of conflict in the Iraq War in 2004 and ensuring the safety of over 200,000 U.S. citizens in the aftermath of the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster in 2011.
Gillingham looks to his “People, Platforms, Performance and Power” priorities â also known as 4Ps â to drive medical initiatives for both the Navy and Marine Corps in the future fight.
At the Sea-Air-Space 2021 exposition, he lauded efforts by the One Navy Medical Team and key contributions of the team to the national discussion surrounding COVID-19 transmission awareness.
âWe cannot forget, as much as we supply public health and infectious disease care, at its heart the Navyâs response was the resilience of our sailors,â Gillingham said.
Join POC’s Data-Driven 2021 Series: Fostering Resilient, All-of-Nation Pandemic Response on Jan. 25 to hear from government and industry representatives who will give their perspectives on the global health crisis. Register here.