Lieutenant General Robert Miller, MD, the surgeon general of the U.S. Air Force, toured UNMC in August.
Lt. Gen. Miller’s visit on Aug. 18 included a tour of the new Munroe-Meyer Institute and a tour of the Davis Global Center that included an in-depth look at iEXCEL and the Training, Simulation and Quarantine Center, which is part of the Global Center for Health Security.
Lt. Col. Elizabeth Schnaubelt, director of C-STARS Omaha, also hosted the general and his staff, offering them updates on the C-STARS "Principles of Biocontainment Care" course and Infectious Diseases Air Transport. C-STARS Omaha is one of four sites around the country, all of which are managed by the U.S. Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine (USAFSAM), part of the 711th Human Performance Wing in the AF Research Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio.
Chris Kratochvil, MD, Global Center for Health Security Distinguished Chair, joined Gen. Miller for much of the day. The general also met with Maj. Gen. (USAF, Ret) Rick Evans, executive director of the National Strategic Research Institute, UNMC Chancellor Jeffrey P. Gold, MD, Jim Linder, MD, Nebraska Medicine Chief Executive Officer, Pamela Boyers, PhD, associate vice chancellor, clinical simulation and others.
"This is my second visit to UNMC, but to see how far even this facility has come is quite impressive," Lt. Gen. Miller said. "The biocontainment training and the partnership between UNMC and the U.S. Air Force is critical to our mission, so we appreciate this relationship and look forward to continuing to develop it. It’s not only important to the Air Force, it’s important to our country."
Dr. Kratochvil agreed that the partnership between the Air Force, UNMC and Nebraska Medicine is an important one.
"We were honored to have Lt. Gen. Miller and his team here as well as representatives of USAFSAM," he said. "The visit provided a welcome opportunity to highlight some of our incredibly successful collaborations to date, like the C-STARS program, discuss new projects on the horizon and explore future opportunities."