USNS Mercy (T-AH-19) is the lead ship of her class of hospital ships in non-commissioned service with the United States Navy. Her sister ship is USNS Comfort (T-AH-20). She is the third US Navy ship to be named for the virtue mercy. In accordance with the Geneva Conventions, Mercy and her crew do not carry any offensive weapons, though defensive weapons are available.
Humanitarian aid is material and logistic assistance, usually in the short-term, to people in need. Among the people in need are the homeless, refugees, and victims of natural disasters, wars, and famines. The primary objective of humanitarian aid is to save lives, alleviate suffering, and maintain human dignity.
Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU) is a health science university and professional school of the U.S. federal government. The primary mission of the school is to prepare graduates for service to the U.S. at home and abroad as uniformed health professionals, scientists and leaders; by conducting cutting-edge, military-relevant research; by leading the Military Health System in key functional and intellectual areas; and by providing operational support to units around the world.
Strong Angel is an informal consortium of agencies and organizations that have hosted a series of international disaster response demonstrations leveraging public-private collaboration within a complex disaster response scenario. Since 1999 the Strong Angel series has focused on field experimentation within very challenging environments, testing cutting-edge techniques and technologies to facilitate more effective humanitarian response.
Frank Lee Bowman, a retired four-star Admiral, is the former Chief of Naval Personnel and former Director of Naval Nuclear Propulsion. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2009 for his leadership in the design of nuclear-reactor propulsion plants to support the power requirements of evolving combat systems.
Abraham Verghese is an American physician, author and Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine and Vice Chair of Education at Stanford University Medical School. He is the author of four best-selling books: two memoirs and two novels. In 2011, he was elected to be a member of the Institute of Medicine. He received the National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama in 2015. He is the co-host with Eric Topol of the podcast Medscape Medicine and the Machine.
Médecins du monde, or Doctors of the World, is an international humanitarian organization which seeks to provide emergency and long-term medical care to the world's most vulnerable people. It also advocates for an end to health inequities.
William Middleton Griggs, is a retired Australian physician specialising in trauma.
The term military medicine has a number of potential connotations. It may mean:
International health, also called geographic medicine, international medicine, or global health, is a field of health care, usually with a public health emphasis, dealing with health across regional or national boundaries. One subset of international medicine, travel medicine, prepares travelers with immunizations, prophylactic medications, preventive techniques such as bed nets and residual pesticides, in-transit care, and post-travel care for exotic illnesses. International health, however, more often refers to health personnel or organizations from one area or nation providing direct health care, or health sector development, in another area or nation. It is this sense of the term that is explained here. More recently, public health experts have become interested in global processes that impact human health. Globalisation and health, for example, illustrate the complex and changing sociological environment within which the determinants of health and disease express themselves.
Robert Peter Gale is an American physician and medical researcher. He is known for research in leukemia and other bone marrow disorders.
Isaac Ashkenazi is an Israeli Professor of Disaster Medicine at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel and a consultant to Harvard University. He is considered one of the world’s foremost experts in medical preparedness for complex emergencies and disasters.
Olufunmilayo I. Olopade born in the year 1957, is a Nigerian hematology oncologist, Associate Dean for Global Health and Walter L. Palmer, Distinguished Service Professor in Medicine and Human Genetics at the University of Chicago. She also serves as director of the University of Chicago Hospital's Cancer Risk Clinic.
The physician to the president is the formal and official title of the physician who the president of the United States chooses to be their personal physician. Often, the physician to the president also serves as the director of the White House Medical Unit, a unit of the White House Military Office responsible for the medical needs of the president of the United States, vice president, White House staff, and visitors. The physician to the president is also the chief White House physician.
Linton Wells II is an American public servant and educator who served a total of 51 years in government service. He served 26 years in the United States Navy as an officer, and then was appointed by the President of the United States as the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, serving through two administrations of both parties, both the Democrat Bill Clinton and the Republican George W. Bush. He wrote many books, articles, and white papers on matters of national security, including important texts related to the use of American military capabilities in global humanitarian operations. His expertise focused on the strategic impacts of technological change and on building resilience to natural and man-made disasters as issues of US national security. He shaped, over five decades of public service, current US Department of Defense directives that link policy and technology with public-private cooperation. His writings significantly altered U.S. and international approaches to civil-military engagement, US policy in global humanitarian assistance, and global public-private partnerships in disaster relief. He has also made fundamental contributions to technical areas that have defined network-enabled military capabilities and cyberspace operations. After retiring from public service, he continued to contribute to the international STAR-TIDES network that he had founded in 2007, a consortium of several thousand global nodes comprising agencies, organizations, institutions and individuals in 40+ countries that promote the free exchange of research results on global issues of human security. As of 2021 he is Executive Advisor to the Center for Resilient and Sustainable Communities (C-RASC) at George Mason University and chairs the Advisory Group of the C4I and Cyber Center there. C-RASC has been working with the People-Centered Internet (PCI) on ways to “put humanity at the center of the Internet” and support a variety of revitalization initiatives. He is on the board of PCI, and also the President and CEO of Global Resilience Strategies and Senior Advisor to Resilient Japan. He was listed by Fortune magazine in 2009 as one of the top 16 "Players of Tech".
Frederick M. "Skip" Burkle, Jr. is an American physician known for his work in human rights, international diplomacy and peacemaking, humanitarian assistance, and disaster response. He has been called "the single most talented and experienced post-conflict health specialist working for the United States government." His medical qualifications include pediatrics, emergency medicine, psychiatry, public health, and tropical medicine.
Gregory R. Ciottone is an American physician specializing in disaster medicine and counter-terrorism medicine. He is an associate professor of emergency medicine at Harvard Medical School and the founding director of the BIDMC Fellowship in Disaster Medicine, the first of its kind in a Harvard teaching hospital. As well, he holds the position of director for medical preparedness at the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative, a joint program of the Harvard T.H.Chan School of Public Health and the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard John F. Kennedy School of Government. He also serves as a consultant to the White House Medical Unit for the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations. In 2019 he was elected president of the World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine. (WADEM).
Michele Barry is a professor of medicine. She became Stanford's inaugural Senior Associate Dean of global health in 2009 and started the Stanford Center for Innovation in Global Health in 2010. Prior to this, she was a professor at Yale, where she started the first refugee health clinic and homeless health mobile van project, for which she was awarded the Elm Ivy Mayor’s Award. She specializes in tropical medicine, emerging infectious diseases, women’s leadership in global health, and human and planetary health.
Edith Peterson Mitchell (1947-2024) was a retired Brigadier general of the United States Air Force and an oncologist. She was clinical professor of medicine and medical oncology at Thomas Jefferson University. In 2015, she became the president of the National Medical Association.
Field Ready is a non-profit, global humanitarian aid and development, non governmental organization that helps provide critical items and training to people when they are in need of them.
