Admin Blog

The USPHS has plenty on its plate. As if the PPACA wasn't enough (the ensuing OMB review, commissioning freezes, new regulations to implement the Act), we have a new COER system to implement, and the ASH and SG are reviewing the operational components of USPHS Commissioned Corps. The Inactive Reserve Corps has been dismantled. Permanent promotions are on hold. The billet system is being overhauled. The PPACA also requires the SG to chair a new “National Prevention, Health Promotion and Public Health Council” to include most of the President’s Cabinet and provide coordination and leadership for all aspects of public health in the United States. Funding the new authorized Ready Reserve and Public Health Service Tracks in the Corps was not included in the PPACA. Funding will depend on congress. Depending on how the mid-term elections play out, the funding may not materialize, so depending on political winds...

Meanwhile, Smart Power, and the programs and money to support it, is being lobbied by organizations that believe that President Obama’s $58.8 Billion request for the International Affairs Budget should be fully funded to develop civilian-led tools of development and diplomacy. What is Smart Power? Retired military leaders express to congress the need for Smart Power as Veterans for Smarter Power, part of the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition of businesses and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO's) who believe as former Surgeon General VADM Carmona did in this speech that power should be leveraged for humanitarian, public health missions.

I certainly see the logic in that as combat operations end in Iraq, and operations continue in Afghanistan, with much focus of the military on helping establish workable public infrastructures in those countries, including public health systems. The DoD, USPHS, Coast Guard and 20 NGO's have contributed to the 2010 humanitarian missions in flood-stricken Pakistan, and major humanitarian and civic assistance missions in the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean. All evidence that Smart Power is on the move, but is it on the move for the Commissioned Corps of the USPHS?

Recently the Dept. of State started to manage a new Civilian Response Corps which provides civilian federal employees with the funding, training and equipment to deploy rapidly world-wide to provide "reconstruction and stabilization assistance to countries in crisis or emerging from conflict." HHS is hiring 5 new employees for the ACTIVE Civilian Response Corps A (CRC-A) who would deploy within 48 hours anywhere in the world to support the mission and 40 existing HHS employees for the STANDBY Civilian Response Corps (CRC-S) who would augment the CRC-A by deploying for up to three months to provide specialized services as part of the whole of government response.

While international responses for humanitarian missions and disaster response plays to Smart Power, does our domestic response network seem to play 2nd fiddle? The USPHS could have used funding to respond to domestic disasters with the HAMR teams. But the funding never materialized, and our Tier Teams do what they can with very limited funding.

As U.S. Coast Guard's ADM Thad Allen recently commented in an NPR interview, there has to be unity of effort to coordinate and focus the energy and the efforts of government with all of the millions of people who want to do something in the wake of any disaster.

Hopefully our leadership and particularly our new Surgeon General, as mired as they are in the aftermath of the PPACA, transformation, and reorganization, has a short and long term plan of action to ensure a Smart Power role exists for the Commissioned Corps of the USPHS, both domestically and internationally.