U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Telita Crosland, director of the Defense Health Agency, welcomed the employees of the newly established DHA Research and Development organization during an event at Fort Detrick in Maryland, DVIDS reported Thursday.
DHA Research and Development is led by Brig. Gen. Edward Bailey, who also oversees the agency’s Research and Engineering Directorate, and has more than 1,500 scientists, acquisition experts, program managers and support staff at offices and laboratories worldwide.
The newly created organization includes the Army’s Medical Research and Development Command, which was transferred to DHA in accordance with the National Defense Authorization Act.
“You know how your mission set gets after improving health and building readiness or the capability of the force. Whether it’s what you do connecting with the FDA, or in product development, or fielding and equipping—all feeds into the National Defense Strategy. Which includes improving clinical readiness—work that supports combat care. If you think about what the technology you are developing is going to do for increasing frontline clinical capabilities, that’s critical to growing and increasing clinical readiness in a demonstrable way,” Crosland, a 2024 Wash100 awardee, told personnel of the new DHA organization.
DHA Research and Development also includes medical research labs conducting studies on military infectious diseases, military chemical and biological defense, combat casualty care and other biomedical research areas.