“I came into Corps without a clear idea of what I wanted to do, but it sounded interesting,” he admits. He spent his first 10 years a as nurse practitioner supporting Native Americans in different clinical settings in the southwestern part of the U.S. As he discovered how difficult life on a reservation could be, he also found that he had a passion for providing care to underserved populations.
In the years that followed, Stevermer worked on programs for migrant farm workers, the homeless, and other people with financial need, HIV infected patients, and emergency response. His first disaster response was in central Africa in 1994 following the civil war in Rwanda
“It opened my eyes to medical needs of people who survive disasters,” Stevermer said. “I realized emergency preparedness and response is a critical element of public health. Disaster survivors are not only injured from the event, but are also separated from their systems of healthcare. Helping them directly and by putting those healthcare systems back in place as quickly as possible is rewarding.”
That passion grew as he supported the Commissioned Corps Readiness Force, (now the Office of Force Readiness Deployment), a Disaster Medical Assistance Team, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) emergency response programs, and finally Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) and its predecessor organizations Office of Emergency Preparedness (OEP) and Office of Public Health Emergency Preparedness (OPHEP).
In the dozens of field responses (“too many to count”) he discovered that field leaders need a distinct skill set. “You need real leadership skills, not program management skills,” he explains. “The rewards that drive managing a program are different from the motivations you need to be a leader deployed in the field.”
Field leaders must instill confidence and trust in field responders and move them forward with the mission. Deployed responders come from diverse backgrounds and professions and leaders have to manage all those elements successfully in a short period of time.
“You have to accept the fact that it’s a disaster and you can’t control it all. That is the definition of a disaster; it overwhelms your capacity,” he says. “Trying to manage it like you do your daily life doesn’t work.”
“And managing healthcare teams is different from managing other types of response teams,” he adds. “Command and control from the top, like in a fire, doesn’t work with health people. You need to delegate, and you need to maintain transparency of leadership. Making decisions without explanations doesn’t work in healthcare.”
He notes that emergency response breaks down the barriers of the command and control structure so it’s not a hierarchy of importance like it is in a bureaucracy.
“Everyone on the response organization chart is equally important in the success of a response, so you have to debunk the concept that one position is more important than another; the person directing traffic is just as important as the incident commander,” he stresses. “People making a decision to lead in the field need to understand the differences between response and bureaucratic organization structure; bureaucracy is hierarchical, response is integrative. Leaders earn trust by becoming part of the response team and by neither demanding nor accepting preferential treatment. When tents need to be set up everyone helps.”
While Stevermer’s career evolved through primary care to prevention programs, ambulances to hospital care, and local to regional to national program development, he has found that emergency response touches the entire spectrum of health care. He encourages officers to engage with emergency preparedness and response as a core public health function.
“You need fire in the belly for emergency response,” Stevermer said. “It’s a robust discipline. It takes you away from family and that’s hard. Disasters change the character of the people responding. Emergency preparedness and response attracts top-notch, non-uniform personnel, too. So, officers who chose to rotate into emergency response should do it because they have a passion for it.”
His final rotation as a Corps officer was in Canada as a U.S. Health Emergency Preparedness liaison between ASPR and the Public Health Agency of Canada He will be succeeded in this position by CAPT Brad Austin, formerly from ASPR and the Medical Reserve Corps (MRC). “ASPR is the best group I’ve been involved in throughout my career,” he says. “I love what I do.” So he’s staying. As he hung up his uniform in January, he transitioned to a civilian position as a Regional Emergency Coordinator in Region X.
You can find Andy at the same old number and email address.
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HHS, Office of Public Health and Science |