While the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps is one of our country’s seven uniformed services, its inextricable ties to the United States Navy are revealed in the dates that were chosen to celebrate its bicentennial: 1 January 1998 to 16 July 1999. These bookend dates were selected in order to point to the passage of “An Act for the relief of sick and disabled Seamen” on July 16, 1798, which used funds from a tax levied on shipowners (who deducted it from their seamen’s wages) to fund health care provided at “marine hospitals” in port cities, as well as to build new hospitals for the same purpose in port cities that did not have them.
As the United States expanded its territory throughout the 19th century, harbors were built along the Great Lakes, the Gulf of Mexico, major inland rivers, and eventually the Pacific Coast, and with the harbors came more marine hospitals. In 1870, these facilities were reorganized and placed under the control of the Marine Hospital Service based in Washington, D.C. The new service was placed under the administration of Supervising Surgeon John Maynard Woodworth, a former surgeon in the Union Army during the Civil War. Drawing on his military background, Woodworth created a system of examinations for applicants and having the physicians serving at the various hospitals wear uniforms. Although Woodworth died in 1879, his concept of a medical organization based on a cadre of physicians commissioned to be deployed and serve where needed came to fruition with the establishment of the Commissioned Corps of the Marine Hospital Service in 1889.
In the latter part of the 19th century, the Marine Hospital Service expanded its horizons beyond the care of seamen and into the domain of public health in general. It was given a prominent role in the containment of infectious diseases when it was granted quarantine authority by the National Quarantine Act of 1878. The service was also tasked with conducting medical examinations of the hundreds of thousands of immigrants entering the country at that time in order to prevent the introduction of diseases that could pose a public-health threat.
These new duties led to the service being renamed the Public Health and Marine Hospital Service in 1902; ten years later the title was reduced simply to the Public Health Service (PHS). In 1944, the Public Health Service Act placed the PHS under the authority of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, which became the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in 1980. Today, the Assistant Secretary for Health in the HHS oversees the U.S. Public Health Service and its Commissioned Corps, with the Surgeon General directly managing the Commissioned Corps.'
The Bicentennial Unit Commendation is awarded to all officers in the Commissioned Corps who served on active duty and in a satisfactor manner between January 1, 1998 and July 16, 1999.