Air Force officials tour UNMC as part of ongoing partnership

Stephen Mounts, U.S. Air Force associate deputy surgeon general, tours the UNMC Davis Global Center on May 4.

Several U.S. Air Force officials, including USAF Associate Deputy Surgeon General Stephen Mounts, toured the UNMC campus in early May as part of an ongoing partnership between the military and the university.

Mounts was joined by several other Air Force officials for a schedule that included tours of iEXCEL and the Global Center for Health Security, both headquartered in the Davis Global Center.

Mounts said the visit was designed to familiarize him with the partnership between the two organizations.

Although Mounts started his current post in December, his Air Force career spans 30 years, including a stint at Offutt Air Force Base in Bellevue as the 55th Medical Group’s commander.

The partnership, which includes the Center for Sustainment of Trauma and Readiness Skills, or C-STARS, has grown over the years, Mounts said.

“As the campus here has expanded, the opportunities have expanded to share knowledge,” he said.

On the tour, the group watched a presentation in the holographic theater and visited training and simulation rooms on upper levels of the building.

Visitors snapped photos on their phones along the way. One guest remarked that the training facilities’ simulation capabilities were “as real as it gets.”

The group also toured the quarantine unit on the lower level, asking questions about how officials handled patients from the Diamond Princess cruise ship during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Wow,” one visitor said walking through the halls. “They thought of everything, didn’t they?”

The tour wrapped up with a look at ISTARI devices, the Isolation System for Treatment and Agile Response for high-risk Infection. Mounts and other visitors slipped their arms into the gloves on the portable rooms, eventually posing for a group photo between two of the units.

Before leaving, visitors offered suggestions, such as making the mobile devices compatible with hoists to be transported via helicopter.

Something Mounts took away from the visit: keeping up the momentum with the university, which has been a “fantastic partner and extremely welcoming to the DoD community, not just the medical folks but certainly U.S. Strategic Command and the U.S. Special Operations community.”

Mounts said he appreciates the university’s partnership and visionary leadership and has no doubt the continued collaboration with DoD will bring significant value to the nation.

“This was a great opportunity to get a broad representation of Air Force collaborators together to build upon our outstanding partnership with C-STARS,” said Chris Kratochvil, MD, UNMC interim vice chancellor of external relations.

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