Setting an Example For Others to follow

Robert E. Bush Naval Hospital, Twentynine Palms, Calif. (NNS) -- The newest member of the Healthcare Business Operations Directorate is also new to the Navy and counts this assignment as his first duty station.

Lt. Gabriel Forrey, Medical Service Corps is ready for the challenge of maintaining the hospital's business operations of gathering, measuring and maintaining data collection for the facility. That information can then be used tp determine the scope of medical services here and funding to this hospital for patient care.

Forrey may be a new Navy officer, but said he feels his experience of healthcare policy though his education and personnel experiences gives him a good starting point.

Forrey attended high school in Olympia, Wash., where he planned on attending college close to home.

"I was planning to go to the University of Washington, but one day in class during my senior year a friend's backpack broke open and a flyer about the University of Hawaii fell out and I saw the photos of the rainbow and the beaches."

The 17-year old really didn't know what he wanted to do at the time, but said he did know that he wanted to go somewhere really cool. So he applied and was accepted to University of Hawaii.

Forrey's planned educational path at the time was to become a medical doctor with his undergraduate studies in Biology.

While in Hawaii, Forrey also volunteered to work with the Cancer Research Center of Hawaii.

"They were looking at the prevalence of underage drinking incidents on the island of Oahu. I was 17 and in my freshman year of college. I worked a sting operation with two undercover police officers where I would go to drinking establishments all over the island and try to buy alcoholic beverages. We found that about 40 percent of all establishments that I would try to buy from would sell to underage people."

Forrey said those establishments were fined $1,000 for the first violation, $3,000 for the second violation and permanent loss of their liquor license for their 3rd violation.

"That was my Hawaii 5-0 experience," he added.

Following Hawaii Forrey then headed to New York where he got a job as a paralegal at the law firm of Weitz and Luxenberg where he worked for a couple of years on medical case analysis. That experience lit an interest in Public Health so he thought about getting a Masters in Public Health (MPH). However, he needed to get his grade-point-average up to be more competitive so he enrolled at Yale University to accomplish the task and complete his MPH. At Yale he earned a Master's Degree in Public Health with an emphasis in Health Policy, Administration and Global Health.

During a summer Internship for UNICEF, originally known as the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund, Forrey was sent to India. There he worked with 3 other Interns on a case study (Delivering Primary Healthcare and Education to the Brahmaputra River Islands: A Case Study of the Akha: Boat of Hope) which is a method the Indian Government uses to deliver health care to the rural island-dwelling populations in the Brahmaputra River in Northeastern India.

"We looked at how health care and educational opportunities were delivered to these river islands. A man, a native from the islands, by the name of Sanjoy Hazarika actually developed a boat program and the first one was called the 'Boat of Hope.' He would get doctors, nurses, midwives and other support people like lab techs and others to travel by boat to these islands. They would help the island people with the basics of health care like helping those inflicted with Malaria and checking blood pressure doing vital signs and suturing wounds," said Forrey.

"The program has now grown to about five boats with the National Rural Health Initiative of India now funding them, and they want to scale that model of health care up to cover all of India because it is such an effective way to get health care out from urban centers into Rural India," said Forrey.

This model of health care delivery kind of ties into the Navy's Pacific Partnership which first fed his interest in joining the Navy, Forrey said.

"I thought those big white ships were really cool. They have everything on them needed to deliver care around the world, and they go to some really cool places. That was one of the reasons why I joined the Navy," he said.

Forrey said he hopes to deploy on one of the Navy Medicine ships one day.

"I always put my name on the list, hopefully I will get picked one day to deploy on one of them."

Forrey's Global Health work continued as a Program Manager and Teaching Fellow at Yale. He was instrumental in facilitating the group who were to eventually rewrite the Mental Health policy for the 24 million population of Ghana.

"One day my boss said we weren't getting any traction in helping Ghana. Having worked with the Director General of Ghana, I asked my boss to give me a chance to speak to him so we could maybe get something moving. The focus they (Ghana) had was on Mental Health policy so the task was to revise the policy for the entire country," said Forrey.

Forrey said Ghana's mental health care policy at that time was only for institutionalized care, which meant that everyone who had a mental health issue would be placed in a hospital and stay there until they got well.

"So I called him up, he was in Accra, Ghana and I was in New Haven, Conn. We chatted for the better part of an hour about what the issues were, who the stake holders were, what the roadblocks were and I asked him a couple of questions that were very honest simple questions and I asked would you support it and do you think you could support it," said Forrey. "At the end of our conversation he said you know this is something that we really need to look at. He said that he was going to send a delegation to Yale. He sent five people including some of the leading psychiatrists, the head policy maker and the country's vice-president who was able to reignite the political debate. They came and eventually in 2011 Ghana passed the revised Mental Health reform Act which had at that time been in Parliament for about 5 years," said Forrey. "I'm not the one who wrote the policy, there were some brilliant minds behind that policy. My role was that of a facilitator for getting the people together, which was a feather in the cap of the Yale program and the Director General in Ghana."

Other international projects Forrey worked on included the countries of Rwanda and Ethiopia then at the end of 2011 the Navy gained a highly experienced and trained Medical Service Corps officer.

"I no longer had the drive to get my MD, and I met my future wife at the time. So, it was one of those decisions that I had to think long and hard about, changing the course of my life at the time. That's when I started thinking about the Navy as a career and being able to transition into a career vice doing something short-term," Forrey said.

When not busy with work Forrey is learning rock climbing at the Joshua Tree National Park, taking photos or traveling to Las Vegas to visit with his wife, Mariana, who is studying at the University of Las Vegas, where her goal is to earn a doctorate in Physical Therapy.

Forrey's leadership philosophy is to lead by example and to be gentle but firm.

"I guess some people would call it say what you mean and mean what you say... in that sense I am not going to jump to conclusions. I'm not going to come in with a presumption about how someone is... are they late because something happened or are they late to be rebellious," Forrey said. "As a leader I would like to be someone people emulate because they want to out of respect. Also, I aspire to be thoughtful, wise, helpful and considerate."


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