While the primary mission of the Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) is focused on the protection, promotion, and advancement of health and safety for the citizens of this country, global interconnectivity means that disease outbreaks in far-away countries are potentially just days or hours away from gaining a foothold in America. And the migration of immigrants and refugees into the U.S. also carries with it the potential to either introduce new diseases or spark a resurgence of illnesses that for decades have been almost non-existent here.
For these and other reasons, the Commissioned Corps is often asked to deploy to non-domestic locations to provide medical treatment and relief in nations without adequate means or equipment to do so. To recognize the work of officers sent abroad in response to disasters or disease outbreaks, the USPHS established the Global Response Service Award (GRSA).
Retroactive for service performed during deploys after October 1, 2004, the GRSA acknowledge an officer’s direct participation in an official deployment of a Commissioned Corps deployment to a designated, non-domestic location or in response to an international emergency.
Participation in a non-domestic Corps deployment is not sufficient to merit the GRSA. For deployments to be GRSA-eligible, they must meet several requirements. In addition to being away from the officer’s regular duty assignment location, they must also be a crisis response to a natural or man-made disaster that has been deemed eligible for the GRSA by the Surgeon General. Officers must be deployed for at least seven days, and the officer is required to be deployed in the appropriate, designated USPHS uniform (uniform exemptions can be made by the Surgeon General, however).
Officers of the Commissioned Corps are eligible for only one GRSA for direct participation in a single crisis response even if they met the seven-day deployment requirement on more than one occasion.