Recent Blogs Posts

Anytime I read an idea or proposal on the internet these days, I'll take a quick look at the comments underneath the article. I admit it's a bit like rubbernecking at the accident scene. Amid the din are a few rare nuggets of thoughtful commentary, which are immediately swamped with a series of detractors armed with the "simplest argument":

"Nobody is putting a gun to your head (fill in the blanks)..."
"If we let them (fill in the blanks) the next thing they'll want to do is ...

Thank you US Coast Guard:
Rumor has it that the US Public Health Service will be replacing the Battle Dress Uniforms (BDU’s), and changing to the Operational Duty Uniform (ODU). The ODU is the current fatigue uniform of the US Coast Guard (USCG).
This is good news. The Public Health Service (PHS) had very few options for a new fatigue uniform. So, what’s all the fuss?
Navy Work Uniform (NWU):
About five years ago the Public Health Service leadership made a decision that ...

PHS Officer Training Part 1: Move the Officer Basic Course
The Whole Kit and Caboodle
Good things are happening to the United States Public Health Service. In the past couple of years the Public Health Service (PHS) has made a great effort to increase the purposefulness of the Commission Officers Training Academy (COTA). The Commission Officer Training Academy is the PHS’s organization that operates the Officer Basic Course (OBC). When a new officer is called to active duty their ...

In the last article it was suggested that the Public Health Service (PHS) would be better served if their awards directly matched the awards of the military services. The previous recommendations may seem academic, but it does tidy things up. The discussion will continue on the subject of unit, and service awards of the Public Health Service.
These are my observations, suggestions, and nothing more.

Unit Awards
What is a unit award? Generally, it is a ribbon and not a medal. ...

Deployments have revealed one certainty (at least for me); our data collection and our status updates must be cloud-based and multi-platform. If you don't know what I mean by this, I'll break it down; we all need to leverage our personal smartphones and tablets to collect data and merge data centrally. We need an app that we can all use!

I can only describe our command-center, windows pc-based, "let's find a connection with some bandwidth" way of merging data and connecting to the ...