REMARKS BY:	Steven  Galson, Acting Surgeon General
PLACE:	Tucson, AZ
DATE:	Thursday, June 12, 2008

Keynote Address 2008 USPHS Scientific and Training Symposium

 

Remarks as prepared; not a transcript.

RADM Steven K. Galson, M.D., MPH
Acting Surgeon General
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

Keynote Address
2008 USPHS Scientific and Training Symposium

June 12, 2008
Tucson, AZ

Thank you for the gracious introduction.

Since my first day as Acting Surgeon General in October I have felt unbelievably privileged to lead this force of Commissioned Officers.

Never in my wildest career dreams did I imagine that I would be the Surgeon General.

I had given career advice to dozens of people, particularly over my last few years at the Food and Drug Administration. I was pretty straightforward in my advice:

No gimmicks, no tricks, no connections — JUST DO YOUR JOB WELL. Work hard, meet the goals agreed to with your supervisors, show initiative and creativity and you will get ahead — because people will recognize your value and your importance to your organization.

Never did I imagine that in fact my own career would benefit so powerfully from this lesson.

It’s not who you know but how you do your job that dictates your level of success….

And this lesson, that you are rewarded as a leader by the success of your leadership — is critically important.

Yes, I feel some sense of accomplishment seeing our Officers mentioned in the press and by leaders in public health.

BUT the recognition that I get from the support I have felt from Corps officers — this has been the essence that has kept me going through this total personal professional transformation of the last 9 months — and you ALL have been jointly responsible for that support. THANK YOU.

And I cannot go on without recognizing some really special people who are at my side.

I do not know how to succinctly thank Rear Admiral Bob Williams enough for his support, for his superb management skill, for his deep knowledge of the Corps and dedication to the Office of the Surgeon General.

Deputies rarely get the thanks and appreciation they deserve for the fact that they are the ballast that keeps many ships of government afloat in rough waters - and Bob has certainly exemplified that in his leadership.

Bob, stand up for a minute, lets give it up for Admiral Williams.

There’s another leader I want to recognize, and that’s our Chief of Staff and Chief Nurse Officer, Rear Admiral Carol Romano.

Are there any nurses in the audience who want to help me thank Carol for agreeing to do TWO tough jobs with grace and focus? Thank you, Carol.

My fantastic team in the Office of the Surgeon General, and that includes too many people to name - from senior officers who are office directors to our junior officers - you know who they are.

You have enabled and supported me with a robust agenda in obesity prevention, prevention of underage drinking, health diplomacy, and in growing the great Medical Reserve Corps program.

Every dark cloud has its silver lining and a great example of that in our work is that budget pressure has mostly preventing my immediate office staff from traveling with me as I’ve worked around the country on our Healthy Youth for a Healthy Future Initiative.

But that dark cloud has allowed me to enlist officers from all around the country, from many professional categories to work with me as aides and temporary members of our obesity prevention team:

From our Regional Health Administrators, some of whom are here, to the many junior officers , from California and from West Virginia, from Texas to Florida to New York, I could not have done it without you.

Could every person in this room who has helped on the Healthy Youth for a Healthy Future initiative - whether in Washington or in any state - please stand a minute so I can recognize you?

Through our work together we have shown we can capture the newspaper headlines in a positive way, focus the nation’s attention on critical public health problems support the strained public health infrastructure around the country — all with ACTING leadership.

I could not have done this without my Office of the Surgeon General team and all of you out there.

Corps Influence

You all know that as Acting Surgeon General, my most important role is to serve as our nation’s chief “health educator” - giving Americans the best scientific information available on how to improve their health and reduce the risk of illness and injury.

My Priorities/Your Role

Each of you as Commissioned Corps officers translates that best practice information into action.

You are the faces in the field whose day-to-day work at the agency and program level promote our public health priorities.

You are the messengers.

Through you health science becomes health services.

You are the foot soldiers.

You are helping move American health care from a model that invests too little time, money and effort on preventing disease to a system that emphasizes Disease Prevention.

It WON’T happen without you.

One key aspect of disease prevention is preparedness — and Americans rely on a cadre of responders capable of meeting public health and public safety emergencies, whether natural or man-made.

I know we have some Medical Reserve Corps (MRC) members from the Tucson area who are here today.

Could they stand with the great M-R-C staff under Captain Tosatto?

This is who we are. This is part of what the Commissioned Corps is all about.

Whether in response to a prospective act of terrorism, an emerging infectious illness, or a weather disaster such as a hurricane or tornado, you respond.

We know that we cannot always prevent emergency situations, but we can be prepared so that they do not become large-scale disasters and we can prevent some of the health consequences that arise from disasters.

The Corps’ Emergency Preparedness becomes more refined every day and I know each of you is helping.

I could not leave this topic without a nod to the phenomenal leadership in this area provided by Rear Admiral Craig Vanderwagen.

Talk about change: Admiral Vanderwagen has presided over a huge change in the department, a complete congressionally-mandated adjustment of this nations public health preparedness infrastructure , and he’s done it as an officer and leader of our Corps.

Thank you Craig.

Another key area that I talk about everywhere I go is Eliminating Health Disparities.

Too many Americans in minority groups still suffer from illnesses at a disproportionate rate.

I know that this group is keenly aware of health disparities from your day to day work in urban and rural areas, in Indian Country, indeed everywhere we work.

These health disparities are simply unacceptable.

It is imperative that this change and we need to work aggressively to ensure that it does.

At this meeting we’ve had sessions on transformation, we’ve talked about leadership.

One fact of life that underlies all this is CHANGE.

George Bernard Shaw said: Progress in impossible without change and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

I have deeply impressed that embracing change comes naturally to so many officers I’ve met and worked with in these past months.

I’ve been particularly impressed at the positive force for change represented by our junior officers.

GO Junior Officer Advisory Group!!!!!!!

And I’ve been very impressed by how many of our Chief Professional Officers and Flag Officers are also positive champions for change and adaptation.

I am VERY pleased we are successfully engaging in the actual transformative process the Secretary envisioned.

Our numbers tell the story:

1) At 88.2 percent, we’re already surpassed our readiness goal of (85 percent) for Fiscal Year 2008.

2) We are meeting or exceeding our expectations for response effectiveness.

In that respect, - amazingly - we are actually ‘besting’ the other uniformed services.

3) We’ve been given KEY additional responsibilities — and let me tell you — in Washington people don’t give you additional responsibilities if they don’t think you’re doing a great job - in the arena of Global Health Diplomacy and international health missions.

Officers of the Commissioned Corps are assigned to more locations than our counterparts in any of the other uniformed services.

As we are here in Tucson, 25 of our officers are deployed on health diplomacy training missions in the Pacific Rim and the Southern Hemisphere. By the time this cycle is completed 120 of our officers will participate in these missions - making a difference in the lives of the underserved people of developing countries these parts of the world.

They are so engaged in this life changing work that - like our own Commander Kimberly Elenberg - they are sending back poems to their colleagues at the end of long days, presumably instead of sleeping.

I’m not going to read Commander Elenberg’s poem, but let me assure you tugged on my heartstrings and reinforced my feelings of deep honor of leading this force.

So, thank you Kimberly and thank you to all her colleagues who are on missions, planning to be deployed,

I want to add a really important note to this that we sometimes forget.

Without the willing efforts of the officers who are sometimes working longer hours or learning new tasks while their colleagues are deployed, we would not be so flexible and so responsive.

It is people like you that make me especially proud to wear this uniform.

So, yes, we are doing great things, but I know we can do even better.

We Can Do Better

Our organizational stovepipes and YES even our professional stovepipes sometimes hold us back and constrain us.

I was thrilled to see several combined recruiting booths in the exhibition hall and let me highlight - a combined DIETITIAN and THERAPIST booth is among them.

The pillars of obesity prevention that I’ve been working on - good diet and physical activity - are represented by the partnership of these two professional categories.

The best work in public health, the best work in solving this nation’s problems, is going to come from interdisciplinary collaborations.

The Corps is ideally suited to recognizing these potential projects, stimulating collaborative work and showing how the team is stronger than the individual.

We need to showcase more of these ideas if we expect to continue to be given more responsibilities and leadership in the Department of Health and Human Services (H-H-S), as well as around the government and around the world. I know that in many cases I am preaching to the choir here.

I have heard that in fact what’s holding us back is not the reluctance of people to work together, cross professional boundaries and step out of their regular work; unfortunately there is a concern about a relative lack of available deployments. You should be concerned about this.

I’m aware that our junior officers are especially anxious to see increased opportunities.

To you I say: for as much as you do, we owe you as much.

The aspiration that Junior Officers and others share - a desire for more and better choices, deployments that vary by mission, agency, and geography - is commendable.

Available federal dollars may be relatively scarce, but the deployment opportunities available to you should not be.

We’ve taken pro-active steps to broaden the number of types of officer categories, but more needs to happen.

Whether you’re talking about the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); The Food and Drug Administration (FDA); Indian Health Service (IHS); a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH); another H-H-S agency or a billet outside the Department - deployments need to be easier to obtain than they are right now.

For instance, internal deployments TO and FROM agencies must be encouraged and approved. When they are, officers, agencies, and morale will each be the better for it.

I pledge to do everything in my power to increase deployment availability - and thus enhance your chances for greater professional mobility - soon.

And DO expect the Commissioned Corps to be called upon as a collaborative partner nationally and internationally with increasing frequency.

We’ve made a special effort recently to make the U.S. Navy and other uniformed services aware of the variety of skill sets that our officers possess.

That outreach and communication with active duty military, with our service partners, is vitally important as the Commissioned Corps collaborates on critical missions in new ways.

Our Memorandum of Understanding with the Department of Defense on behavioral health is a great example.

If we do well, there WILL be a steady increase in demand, and need, for Public Health Service (P-H-S) Officers.

As the world shrinks, collaboration across borders is being fostered worldwide - around health issues.

The Commissioned Corps has a participatory role in places and ways too numerous to count.

I am not just talking about health diplomacy and emergency response. Even in the environment and medical product regulatory world, there is more and more international collaboration and the Corps is poised to be in the middle of this profound change.

Whether -

• providing clinical services for Haitian, Cuban and Southeast Asian refugees
• identifying and isolating three separate acute hemorrhagic fever viruses (Ebola, Lassa, and Marburg) in Africa
• helping to restructure Iraq Ministry of Health

- we are ideally suited to serve.

Medical Reserve Corps

I want to make special note of one particular aspect of our evolving and changing public health landscape.

I’m speaking of the Civilian Volunteer Medical Reserve Corps.

The M-R-C, which is under the purview of my office, is a network of groups of volunteers — medical and public health professionals as well as non-health professionals — interested in improving the health and safety of their communities.

This program has seen phenomenal growth since its inception in 2002.

The community assistance that the Tucson unit - who we recognized earlier - provides, the work that you do, is representative of the service rendered by the 741 M-R-C units - 155,000 volunteers in all - nationwide.

All P-H-S officers - active, inactive or retired - should consider supporting or participating with your local M-R-C units.

If there is not a local M-R-C unit in your community, talk to local health officials to encourage them to start one.

PHS officers have already interacted with MRC members on a number of different occasions:

Over 200 MRC volunteers deployed to the Gulf Coast as part of the HHS Katrina response.

These members served with PHS officers at special needs shelters, emergency clinics, cruise ship clinics, and on medical strike teams.

You can provide the same kind of help:

- Where you live and work

- To people you know, and to whom you are a familiar, trusted face….your friends and neighbors.

I URGE YOU TO Become active in the M-R-C.

Adaptability: A Tradition

In closing I want to focus again on one of the greatest strengths of the Commissioned Corps.

We have a custom of changing as required…changing in ways necessary in order for our officers to serve the American people as well as other communities far from our shores.

We must do so again.

Once again we will call on one of the greatest strengths of the Commissioned Corps - our ability to adapt to the changing demands of public health.

We will once again strongly demonstrate the adaptability of the Corps, which has transformed on so many occasions to meet the demands of the times.

The Corps helped to lead the antibiotic revolution and the war on cancer.

We adapted to meet the demands of the largest global migration in the history of the world; and we reconfigured to meet new challenges.

We met the challenges of 9/11, anthrax, and Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Through the era of Corps Transformation — and beyond — we’ll need to reconfigure and revitalize ourselves in light of new realities.

ALWAYS — we must fix our gaze to the future.

I am confident that we — that each of you — will serve as a model during this continued period of change.

Our capacity to lead by example is absolutely critical.

…In Gandhi’s words: “You must BE the change you want to see in the world.”

I know that leading by example is ingrained in our ranks.

We heard about this already in our leadership session yesterday but I don’t think it can be emphasized enough — you set an example by your behavior;

By your constructiveness.

By your “positiveness” in the face of challenge.

By your focus.

You set this example for fellow officers, for the health and public health system and for your fellow citizens.

We will become less anonymous as a Corps by setting an example that is respected, that is breaking new ground, that is a standard of behavior and productivity that others wish to emulate.

Closing and Charge

In closing, I want to empower each of you to be a partisan on behalf of the Commissioned Corps.

All of us need to be a de facto recruiter.

All of us should discuss the Corps - our values, tradition of service, the career opportunities, our varied deployments, the difference we can and have made in saving lives and improving their quality at every opportunity.

Whether in your family, your place of worship, your neighborhood or your workplace, I want you to talk about the Corps.

The end result will be increased interest among health professionals to serve their nation and their community.

The process involves each and every one of you today, tomorrow and for the rest of your lives.

Winston Churchill said: “History will be kind to me because I intend to write it.”

Help me write our history as a Corps.

Help me lead our service into a more visible 21^st century.

The Corps will be better for your effort.

The United States will be stronger for our effort, and

- the world can be a better place.

Thank you.

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Last revised: March 23, 2009