Navy Environmental and Preventive Medicine Unit 2(NEPMU-2) played a key role in facilitating a preventive medicine (PM) brief for humanitarian operations during the Military Medical Humanitarian Course, Jan. 27-28.

The course was co-hosted by Naval Medical Center Portsmouth and the Center for Disaster and Humanitarian Assistance Medicine, which is affiliated with Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences.

The two-day course trains military health care providers in preparing for and executing appropriate medical care to civilian populations in austere humanitarian emergency and disaster relief settings.

Course content focused on understanding this unique health environment and recognizing and managing those conditions consistently associated with high mortality among the most vulnerable populations in those settings.

Personnel at NEPMU-2 train to respond to these types of events and addressed PM functions in a humanitarian setting, such as disease surveillance and principles of sanitation, hygiene and disease vector control.

Lt. Cmdr. Lucas Johnson, and Lt. Cmdr. Patrick McKenna, NEPMU-2 Preventive Medicine officers, instructed the PM section of the course, leveraging their extensive training and experiences to provide insight on basic PM concepts and techniques critical for any medical personnel tasked with response to a humanitarian emergency. They discussed the three basic PM priorities: rapid assessment of needs, addressing the scarcities in the basic population, and establishing a surveillance system to measure and prevent further problems.

"Navy Medicine is fortunate to have physicians with a wealth of experience working in a variety of government and non-government jobs in the area of global health engagement," said McKenna. "It's a real privilege to be able to interact with them in this course and to discuss the public health, population-based perspective in responding to humanitarian emergencies."

In addition to lectures, course scenarios were designed to focused on the role U.S. military medical assets would likely play as responders to a humanitarian emergency. By focusing on the population as a whole, clinicians can significantly contribute to the Department of Defense (DoD) goal of protecting health and preventing unnecessary loss of life when tasked with responding to disasters and humanitarian emergencies.

"We're fortunate enough to have subject-matter experts from across public health to share their knowledge and experience with those willing and ready to respond to humanitarian crises across the globe," said Cmdr. Jennifer Espiritu, officer in charge of NEPMU-2. "It truly crosses knowledge silos and swim lanes, and we're all better prepared for it."

For more information regarding NEPMU-2, visit www.med.navy.mil/sites/nepmu2/Pages/default.aspx

For more news from Navy and Marine Corps Public Health Center, visit www.navy.mil/.