2015 Derek Dunn Memorial Senior Scientist Officer of the Year
CDR Anne C. Dobmeyer
CDR Anne C. Dobmeyer is the Chief Psychologist in the Primary Care Behavioral Health Directorate at the Deployment Health Clinical Center, Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury (DCoE). In this position, CDR Dobmeyer provides leadership and consultation to Navy, Army, and Air Force leaders in the implementation and evaluation of the Department of Defense’s (DoD) primary care behavioral health (PCBH) program, a $44 million initiative covering 3.3 million healthcare beneficiaries. She has shaped policy and practice guidance, developed training curricula, and identified program evaluation metrics needed for successful program sustainment.
CDR Dobmeyer, a board certified Clinical Health Psychologist, serves as board member and Past President of the American Board of Clinical Health Psychology of the American Board of Professional Psychology (ABPP), where she helps evaluate and set the standards for board certifying other clinical health psychologists. CDR Dobmeyer’s publications have focused on the integration of behavioral health consultants into primary care settings. She is an author of the book “Integrated Behavioral Health in Primary Care: Step-by-Step Guidance for Assessment and Intervention,” which has become a standard text across universities, psychology internships, and the DoD. She has co-authored a chapter about USPHS in “The Encyclopedia of Clinical Psychology” and serves as an associate editor for the journal “Translational Behavioral Medicine: Practice, Policy, and Research.” She has also served as an invited scientific reviewer for the National Institutes of Health as well as an ad-hoc reviewer for four peer–reviewed psychology journals.
CDR Dobmeyer was appointed by the U.S. Surgeon General as a voting member of the Commissioned Corps’ Women’s Issues Advisory Board, where she has been influential in shaping USPHS policies related to breastfeeding and has advised on other matters related to gender issues in the workplace. She led the Psychology Professional Advocacy Group (PsyPAG) as Chair in 2013, and in prior years served as the PsyPAG Vice-Chair, Policy Committee Chair, and member of the Professional Development committee. She served on the Scientist Professional Advisory Committee (SciPAC) Visibility Subcommittee, authoring 3 articles and editing 6 issues of the SciPAC newsletter, and as the 2014 PsyPAG Liaison to the Scientist Category. In 2014, PsyPAG awarded CDR Dobmeyer its Senior Career Psychologist Achievement Award for her exceptional service to the USPHS and the field of psychology.
CDR Dobmeyer serves as the Commander of Mental Health Team-2 (MHT-2). She has deployed 7 times in the past 6 years, responding to suicide clusters in Native American communities, Hurricane Irene, Superstorm Sandy, the Boston Marathon bombings, and the Monrovia Medical Unit Ebola response in Liberia. CDR Dobmeyer earned her undergraduate degree from St. Olaf College and her doctoral degree from Utah State University. Prior to joining the PHS, she served in the U. S. Air Force for eight years, completing her clinical psychology internship at Malcolm Grow Medical Center and a post-doctoral fellowship in Clinical Health Psychology at Wilford Hall Medical Center. She is grateful to her PHS psychologist and scientist colleagues, as well as supervisors and leaders within PHS and DoD, for providing mentoring and guidance over the course of her career.
2015 Junior Scientist Officer of the Year
LCDR Qiao Bobo
Dr. Bobo is a Lieutenant Commander in the United States Public Health Service (USPHS) Commissioned Corps and currently serves as an Acting Team Lead in the Division of Manufacturing and Product Quality, Office of Compliance and Biologics Quality, Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). LCDR Bobo overseas the operations of 11 reviewers/inspectors to ensure the safety and availability of the nation’s supply of vaccines and biopharmaceutical products. Prior to becoming an Acting Team Lead, LCDR Bobo served as Director, Regulatory Operations in CBER performing manufacturing reviews and leading inspections of biopharmaceutical manufacturing facilities in the United States and overseas prior to approval or licensure of products. She also led advisory meetings with industry representatives to recommend actions related to facility design, operation, manufacturing, and testing procedures.
Within her role as a senior reviewer and lead inspector, LCDR Bobo has implemented innovative solutions to challenging problems. For example, she identified a novel approach to a Humanitarian Device Exemption application that allowed an important cancer treatment device be approved 6 months ahead of schedule, and she also established new data requirements for multi-dose vial vaccine products to minimize microbial contamination. In addition, LCDR Bobo authored a reviewer tool guide for the division, streamlined the review process by reducing the working load of management, reviewers and project managers without sacrificing the quality of the review memo for approval decisions. LCDR Bobo also contributed significantly to the FDA Draft Guidance for Industry “Contract Manufacturing Arrangements for Drugs: Quality Agreement” which was published in the Federal Register in May 2013. Furthermore, LCDR Bobo was invited as a subject matter expert to speak on a variety of topics (from dengue control to networking) at various conferences and events and was also selected to represent FDA on the Scientific Program Planning Committee for the CASSS International Conference (a scientific society with over 4,000 members).
From December 2014 to February 2015, LCDR Qiao Bobo was deployed to Liberia on an 8 week assignment to the Monrovia Medical Unit (MMU)–a 25-bed field hospital–which functions as an Ebola Treatment Unit. The MMU was established to deliver topnotch care to public health workers in the region and also to reassure such workers that they would be cared for should they contract Ebola. During her deployment with Team 2 as an admin/finance officer, LCDR Bobo was responsible for clinical data capture and transfer from the high risk zone to the MMU database and WebEOC, compiling metrics and reporting to the Liberian Ministry of Health. In addition to her regular duties, LCDR Bobo was also selected by the Officer in Charge to serve as control officer and translator during the visit of a Chinese delegation to the facility.
LCDR Bobo is currently a member of Tier 1 Regional Incident Response Team in the National Capitol Region, a voting member of Scientist PAC and JOAG and a board member of DC COA. LCDR Bobo shared her experience in 20 articles published over the past 3 year in COA Frontline, Scientist Newsletter, JOAG Journal, APAOC Newsletter and DC COA Newsletter. She is also a recipient of numerous PHS awards and FDA awards.
Prior to joining the FDA, Dr. Bobo had more than a decade of experience in the field of vaccines, and gene therapies and in vitro diagnostic devices for biopharmaceutical companies, publishing multiple peer reviewed articles. Dr. Bobo received a BS in Biology from Fudan University in China and her PhD in Cell and Molecular Biology from the University of Vermont.
2015 Scientist Responder of the Year
CDR James L. Kenney
Commander James L. Kenney currently serves as a Lab Chief in the Division of Biological Standards and Quality Control, Office of Compliance and Biologics Quality, Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), Food and Drug Administration. CDR Kenney manages CBER’s Standards and Reagents Production and Biological Shipping Departments, which produces, maintains and ships reference standards world-wide. This allows drug manufactures to calibrate their product’s potency during production and international regulatory agencies to use the same reference standards to confirm drug potency for release testing. CDR Kenney also manages the Laboratory of Microbiology, In-vivo Testing and Standards which performs quality control biological drug release testing and reviews manufactures’ test results to assure drugs are safe and effective before released to the public. In addition, he reviews Biological License Applications and their supplements to ensure analytical methods are appropriately validated, product matrix is suitable for the intended test method, and release specifications reflect manufacturing process capability and are regulatory compliant.
CDR Kenney has been the Deputy Team Captain of the Regional Incident Support Team – National Capital Region (RIST-NCR) since 2013. The RIST-NCR is a Tier 1 team – one of 11 national RISTs that can deploy within 12 hours of activation – comprised of 31 Public Health Service Officer Responders. In this past year, CDR Kenney was deployed three times in support of the Readiness and Deployment Operations Group as a member of the RIST-NCR: 1) CDR Kenney was hand selected from 27 responding team members by the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response’s (ASPR) NCR Regional Emergency Coordinator to assist the U.S. Secret Service (USSS) Multi Agency Command Center in the USSS’s Washington Field Office by providing liaison support in sustaining the strategic preparatory response strategy for the President’s State of the Union Address; 2) CDR Kenney was deployed to support the District of Columbia Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency’s Functional Exercise that simulated a category 2 hurricane impacting the NCR. He was one of the few federal responders involved in this training scenario and educated the participating local, state and regional agencies/departments/NGOs on what federal support services, equipment and supplies were available to them once a federal emergency is declared; and 3) CDR Kenney was deployed to assist ASPR’s Office of Emergency Management’s Division of Planning in writing the HHS 2014 Support Plan for an Ebola Virus Disease Incident Occurring in the U.S. Following this deployment, CDR Kenney continued to remain up-to-date on the Ebola response in Africa. As a result of his work related to Ebola, CDR Kenney volunteered and was selected to lead the diagnostic laboratory operations in the U.S. Military Field Hospital in Liberia in support of the U.S. Government’s effort to respond to the Ebola epidemic.
2015 Scientist Mentor of the Year
CAPT Sara B. Newman
CAPT Sara B. Newman DrPH, MCP, is assigned to the National Park Service (NPS) as the Director of the Office of Public Health where she serves as the agency’s lead public health policy and management expert and is the principal advisor to the Director of NPS for public health decisions affecting 300 million visitors to 407 parks nationwide. CAPT Newman also serves as the Commanding Officer for the United States Public Health Service Operational Division, managing and supporting 50 officers detailed to the Department of Interior. The Office of Public Health provides technical expertise to the NPS on food safety, drinking water safety, waste water and vector control, infectious disease surveillance, outbreak response, and health promotion.
CAPT Newman has been with NPS for 8 years having served as the Deputy Chief, Office of Risk Management and Program Manager of the Public Risk Management Program (PRMP) where she provided management support and strategic planning input for the safety, occupational health, and wellness programs and provided policy guidance and technical support to parks to undertake injury prevention initiatives.
Prior to working for NPS, CAPT Newman served as Special Projects Advisor to the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Health Emergency Medical Countermeasures in the Office of Public Health Emergency Preparedness at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) providing managerial support, technical input, and strategic planning expertise in medical countermeasure planning. Prior to her work at HHS, she was a senior epidemiologist with the Division of Immigration Health Services at the Department of Homeland Security where she managed the agency’s disease surveillance and infection control programs. CAPT Newman started her career in uniform on September 11, 2001 at the rank of Ensign working for the Bureau of Prisons, where she conducted a study on sexually transmitted diseases in female federal prisoners.
CAPT Newman served on the PHS Team 2 Rapid Deployment Team for 5 years, served as the Chair of the Scientist Professional Advisory Committee (SciPAC), and founded the Commissioned Corps Epidemiology Interest Group. CAPT Newman served a term on the DC Commissioned Officers Association (COA) Board of Directors and currently is serving her 2nd term on the Board of Directors of the National COA. This year CAPT Newman serves as the Association’s Chair of the Board of Directors.
CAPT Newman received her Bachelor of Science at the University of Vermont, her Master in Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and her Doctor in Public Health at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. She lives in Arlington, VA with her husband David and her three children, Sharon, Emily, and Carolyn.
