Commander's Blog

This week, many of us enjoyed a day off from work in observance of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. While some of us probably spent time resting or catching up on chores around the house, I hope that everyone took some time to reflect upon the great life and legacy of Dr. King. His fight for civil rights and equality for all certainly continues in his memory today, and here at USAMMDA, we're all about saving lives – each and every one we can – regardless of race, gender, religion, etc. It's our mission, and our legacy.

And speaking of our mission, although we're only a few weeks into 2019, things continue to be very busy for us. The tempo of our organization never seems to lull as we are always working to support our Warfighters by providing critical medical solutions. In light of this, the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command is now engaged in planning the realignment of our Research, Development and Acquisition teams under the Army Futures Command, and a new "One Star" Medical Logistics command under the Army Materiel Command. Although we may be sharply focused on this reorganization of our forces, our mission to protect our Service Members must continue without interruption. So, as you can imagine, we already have quite a lot going on in this New Year, and things will only get busier as the year progresses – so stayed tuned for details!

January is recognized as National Blood Donor month, and our team certainly understands the importance of blood products as we manage high-priority blood programs that include both our U.S.-based freeze-dried plasma and French FDP efforts, which are extremely valuable in saving lives on the battlefield and beyond. The Armed Services Blood Program Office will begin to supply the French with U.S.-sourced plasma so they may convert this into an FDP product for our Special Operations Forces. While our Pharmaceutical Systems Project Management Office is working closely with our commercial partner to obtain U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval for our U.S. FDP product, we also have other blood-related technologies in various stages of development, such as cryopreserved platelets and the Whole Blood Pathogen Reduction Device, which will help to ensure that blood collected on the battlefield for transfusion will meet the FDA's high safety standards.

While our PSPMO team works to provide effective blood solutions for our military, we all can help to save lives by donating blood whenever possible. The demand is high, but the effort is really nominal, as long as you're a healthy candidate. Please check with your local American Red Cross chapter to see its schedule for blood drives, as well as its locations for regular donations. The main web address is https://www.redcross.org/.

And last but not least, the USAMRMC has recently announced that we have a new Principal Assistant for Acquisition, although she's not really new at all. Please join me in congratulating Ms. Dawn Rosarius, who has been named to the Senior Executive Service and is now the official PAA, having served recently as the Acting PAA since the retirement of Dr. Kenneth Bertram last year. During her tenure as the Deputy PAA and as the Acting PAA, Ms. Rosarius has been very supportive of our USAMMDA efforts, and we are very fortunate to continue working with her in the years ahead.

Thanks for your dedication, and remember that we're saving lives with everything we do at USAMMDA!

COL Ryan Bailey