Source: United States Navy
“I am humbled and honored to lead a team of more than 40,000 highly-trained military and civilian health care professionals who provide enduring expeditionary medical support to Sailors and Marines on, below, and above the sea, and ashore,” Via said.
“The work we do across the entire Naval Medical enterprise is vital to our national defense. We directly support warfighter readiness by optimizing the most important weapon system in our arsenal – the human weapon system that fights and wins our nation’s wars. We are integral to a successful military health system working closely with the Defense Health Agency and our sister services to ensure every Sailor, Marine and their families are healthy, ready, and on the job receiving high-quality healthcare in a timely fashion – no matter where they are around the world.”
The Naval Medicine Enterprise is led by the Surgeon General of the Navy to fulfill assigned and delegated duties as the Chief, Bureau of Medicine and Surgery prescribed by Title 10 of the United States Code to include recruiting, organizing, training, and equipping medical personnel of the Department of the Navy (DON).
As Navy Surgeon General, Via serves as the principal advisor to the Secretary of the Navy, Chief of Naval Operations, and Commandant of the Marine Corps on all health and medical matters, including strategic planning and policy development relating to such matters, directing Risk Management and Clinical Quality Management Programs, exercising DON corporate privileging, and oversight for the Navy and Marine Corps operational medical forces.
Via also leads the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, which manages Navy and Marine healthcare policy and global Navy medical research and development, which studies infectious diseases, biodefense, battlefield medicine, and warfighter performance, to increase warfighter medical readiness and survivability.
Via is the first anesthesiologist and the first enlisted Corpsman to rise to the position of U.S. Navy Surgeon General.
Via is a qualified Undersea and Diving Medical Officer who served as the department head for Mobile Diving and Salvage Unit Two in Virginia Beach, Virginia. He deployed aboard USNS Comfort (TAH-20) during Operation Noble Eagle and was the department head for Fleet Hospital Three, 1st Force Service Support Group (1st FSSG), at Camp Viper, Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
He was the first commanding officer at NATO’s Role Three, Multinational Medical Unit in Kandahar, Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom. Additionally, Via served as U.S. Pacific Fleet’s command surgeon, and he was the first Navy medical officer to become command surgeon for U.S. Central Command.
Via’s Flag tours include serving as deputy chief, Bureau of Medicine and Surgery for Operations, Plans and Readiness. He was appointed as the first medical flag officer to stand up Chief of Naval Operations (OPNAV) N44 as the single resource sponsor for expeditionary medical capabilities. He additionally served concurrently as commander of Naval Medical Forces Atlantic and as the senior market manager of the Tidewater Military Health System.
Prior to Senate confirmation, Via was the Navy’s deputy surgeon general and deputy chief of Bureau of Medicine and Surgery. His professional activities include being a certified physician executive and clinical professor of Anesthesiology at Uniformed Services University. He has prior service as an American Board of Anesthesiology Oral Board examiner and has held numerous leadership positions within the American Society of Anesthesiologists and the Uniformed Services Society of Anesthesiologists.
Via is a native of Sullivan, Illinois. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Biology from Millikin University. Via enlisted in the U. S. Navy Reserve in 1985 as a Hospital Corpsman. In 1987 he entered active duty as an Ensign at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Science, where he earned a Doctor of Medicine in 1991. Via completed a Master of Health Care Delivery Science from Dartmouth College in 2014.
More information about Navy Medicine and the U.S. Navy Surgeon General is available on the Navy Medicine website at https://www.med.navy.mil or on the command’s Facebook, Instagram, X platform, formerly known as Twitter, or LinkedIn accounts.