Retired Army Colonel Paul F. Pasquina, MD, chief of the Department of Orthopaedics and Rehabilitation at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Bethesda, Maryland, and director of the Center for Rehabilitation Science Research at the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences (USU), Bethesda, has been selected to chair the newly established Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PM&R) in the USU F. Edward Hebért School of Medicine.
He currently serves as a consultant to federal and non-federal agencies including the National Institutes of Health, Department of Veterans Affairs, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Institute of Medicine, U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, and the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences.
Pasquina has served as the specialty consultant to the Army Surgeon General for PM&R and as the medical advisor to the North Atlantic Regional Medical Command for quality healthcare. He has also authored multiple textbooks, book chapters, journal articles, and policy papers on healthcare-related subjects, including limb loss, phantom limb pain, prosthetics usage, and osseointegration. His leadership in amputee care helped the former Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Washington DC, become the first institution in the world to introduce the clinical use and evaluation of motorized lower-limb prostheses, sophisticated upper-limb prostheses, and implantable microelectrodes that drive prosthetic devices.
As the founding chair, Pasquina will develop a new USU Department of PM&R tailored to meet the specific needs of the military population, both in education and research.
