Apr 21
Convocation: Andrew Garrett ’90
Andrew “Andy” Garrett ’90, a physician who is specialized in pediatrics, disaster medicine, and emergency medical services, has been at the forefront of U.S. emergency response in a post-9/11 era. During a two-year fellowship in EMS and Disaster Medicine, he was deployed to Indonesia on board the U.S.N.S. Mercy as a triage physician and to New Orleans for Hurricane Katrina as part of a Disaster Medical Assistance Team that provided care at the airport. He later took a faculty position at the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University, where his work focused on how to increase the level of readiness of families, cities, and businesses for major disasters. He then accepted a position as the Deputy Chief Medical Officer for the National Disaster Medical System, a program at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and in 2012 he went on to become the Director of this Federal program that delivers emergency medical, veterinary, and mortuary care to communities impacted by disaster through a network of nearly 100 response teams and 6000 employees. Major deployments during his service included the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the Deepwater Horizon disaster, and dozens of others. He is currently posted to the White House National Security Council staff as the Director for Medical and Biodefense Preparedness Policy under their Global Health Security Directorate. The title of his presentation is “Perspectives from a Non-Linear Career in Medicine and Public Health.”