The Prevention through Active Community Engagement (PACE) chartered advisory group of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps grew out of their 2012 development of a strategy to standardize community outreach efforts resulting from their assessment of officer outreach activities at the time. By the next year, the nascent PACE program had become a resource and support network that officers around the country could use to provide health education and promote healthy lifestyles in their local communities. From 2014 to 2017, the PACE program continued to expand its reach to states across the country and beyond while adding to its list of standardized lesson plans to increase the program's reach into more areas of public health, culminating in the release of its first opioid lesson plan to combat the opioid epidemic. As a testament to the importance and success of the program, Surgeon General VADM Adams signed the PACE charter in 2018, making PACE the newest chartered organization in the USPHS Commissioned Corps.

In 2018, the Surgeon General Education Teams (SGETs), a component of PACE, were established to designed to deliver evidence-based, public health related educational lessons focused on OSG priorities to local communities. The information provided by SGETs will enable individuals to make informed decisions regarding unhealthy behaviors. 

SGETs are comprised of active duty USPHS Commissioned Corps officers throughout the ten (10) Health and Human Services (HHS) Regional Areas. Regions with large populations and multiple public health risks factors  may have multiple SGETs.

PACE Charter

PACE Decision Memo

About the PACE Logo

The PACE logo illustrates a parent watching their child swing under the shade of an oak tree to represent 'our' commitment and care for the community. Analogous to planting an acorn, public health impacts are not immediate. Through continued presence and public health engagement, individuals (acorns) will give rise to a healther tomorrow (the shade of the oak tree).