As a strong advocate for women’s health issues, retired Navy Captain Steven W. Remmenga, M.D., spent most of his naval career developing policy that would advance the level of care received by women in the Navy.
For his efforts, Dr. Remmenga, associate professor in the department of obstetrics and gynecology at UNMC, recently received the Robert A. Ross Award for the significant contributions he made to the Navy Section of the Armed Forces District of The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG).
“It is essentially a lifetime achievement award,” said Capt. Terry A. Harrison, M.D., U.S. Navy and chairman of the Navy Section of the Armed Forces District of ACOG. “Dr. Remmenga made multiple contributions to Navy medicine and ob/gyn,” he said.
During his time in the Navy, Dr. Remmenga served as the specialty advisor to the Navy Surgeon General for five years and was instrumental in starting the perinatal advisory group in Navy medicine, Dr. Harrison said.
Under Dr. Remmenga’s leadership the advisory group began many initiatives to improve perinatal care by examining safety issues, best clinicial practices and customer service.
“Dr. Remmenga was a leader in Navy ob/gyn medicine,” Dr. Harrison said.
For Dr. Remmenga, improving the quality of ob/gyn care in naval medicine became a passion he pursued wholeheartedly. The perinatal advisory group was begun, he said, because he saw a lack of standardized care.
“I wanted a system-wide approach,” Dr. Remmenga said. “So that if a woman was seen by a doctor in Japan and then transferred to San Diego she could expect the same level of care.”
Dr. Remmenga said a goal of the group was to bring together all of the ob/gyn services under one system-wide approach. “Obstetrics is more than just OB services,” he said. “It includes gynecology, family practice, pediatrics, nursing services, midwives and anesthesiologists. We wanted to standardize practices so the expectations of the basic level of care would be the same no matter where a patient was in the world.”
Dr. Remmenga also served as a Navy Section Officer in the Armed Forces District and representative to the ACOG. As a liaison, he addressed issues from the ACOG ranging from training to delivery practices. He also brought forth concerns from the Navy.
The college would than act as a conduit between the Navy Section and Congress by reporting any women’s health concerns brought to light.
Dr. Remmenga was surprised with the lifetime achievement award in late October while at the annual district meeting for the Armed Forces District in San Antonio, Texas. “It was quite an honor,” he said. “The fact that your peers recognize some things that you’ve done, it’s nice.”
Dr. Remmenga is still involved with the Navy as a professional school liaison officer. He works with active duty and reserve medical students who are on scholarship to UNMC from the Navy.
A native of Lincoln, Neb., Dr. Remmenga joined the Navy on a ROTC scholarship in 1972. He attended the University of Nebraska-Lincoln where he earned a bachelor of science degree in zoology in 1977 and went on to earn a medical degree from UNMC in 1981.
In 1982, he completed a one-year internship in obstetrics and gynecology at UNMC and spent his residency in obstetrics and gynecology at the Naval Hospital in San Diego from 1983 to 1986. During the next three years, he completed a clinical fellowship in gynecologic oncology at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., and Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., followed by research at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Md.
Before coming to UNMC last year, Dr. Remmenga was the medical director in the office of the lead agent for the Tricare Region Northeast at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., from 1998 to 2002. He retired from the Navy in September of 2002.