Captain Peter Marghella

CAPT Peter Marghella has served as a Professorial Lecturer on disaster medicine and public health preparedness at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at The George Washington University and at A.T. Still University of the Health Sciences.

His recent operational assignments included Special Advisor to the Governor of Puerto Rico in the wake of the 2017 Dual Hurricanes; Senior Advisor for Medical Planning and Preparedness for the International Medical Corps (IMC) during the Ebola crisis in West Africa; and Director of the New York State Office of Emergency Management.

As a career military officer, he served as a Plans, Operations, and Medical Intelligence (POMI) officer in the Navy's Medical Service Corps, holding the most senior medical planning positions in the U.S. Government, including: Medical Response Advisor to the President of the United States aboard the National Airborne Operations Center (NAOC)—better known as “NightWatch;” Director of Medical Contingency Operations for the Office of the Secretary of Defense; Chief of Medical Plans and Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Chief of Medical Plans and Intelligence for the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (the largest of the Combatant Commands in the U.S. Department of Defense).

He holds a doctorate in health sciences in organizational behavior and leadership in public health preparedness from A.T. Still University; Master's degrees in National Security and Strategic Studies from the U.S. Naval War College and Healthcare Administration and Policy from Central Michigan University; and a Graduate Certificate in the Medical Management of Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, and High-Explosive Weapons of Mass Destruction from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. He was an Executive Fellow at the National Preparedness Leadership Institute at the Kennedy School of Government and the T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard University.

CAPT Marghella has published more than 100 book chapters, monographs, articles, and presentations on disaster medicine and public health preparedness. His national planning credentials includes principal authorship of The National Smallpox Response Plan; The Catastrophic Incident Response Plan (for responding to acts of domestic nuclear terrorism); and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Pandemic Influenza Operations Plan and the National Security Council’s Federal Pandemic Influenza Implementation Plan.

Currant as of: 2023NOV13