Medical Advisory Board
James Peake, M.D.
Chairman, Medical Advisory Board
James Benjamin Peake was United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs from 2007 to 2009. In 2004, he retired from a 42-year United States Army career. He also served as the 40th Surgeon General of the United States Army. Peake received his Bachelor of Science degree from U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1966 and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Infantry. He served in Vietnam with the 101st Airborne Division where he was awarded the Silver Star, a Bronze Star with “V” device and the Purple Heart with oak leaf cluster. Following his service in Vietnam, he attended Cornell University’s Weill Cornell Medical College, and was awarded a medical doctorate in 1972. He is also a graduate of the United States Army War College, in 1988. He retired from the Army in 2004, as a Lieutenant General.
Dr. Peake served for four years as the United States Army Surgeon General. He also served as commander of several Army medical units. Previous key assignments include Commander, U.S. Army Medical Department Center and School and Installation Commander, Fort Sam Houston, Texas; Deputy Commander, U.S. Army Medical Command, Fort Sam Houston, Texas; Commanding General, Madigan Army Medical Center/Northwest Health Service Support Activity, Tacoma, Washington; Commanding General, 44th Medical Brigade/Corps Surgeon, XVIII Airborne Corps, Fort Bragg, North Carolina; Deputy Director, Professional Services/Chief, Consultant, Office of the Surgeon General, Falls Church, Virginia; Commander, 18th Medical Command and 121st Evacuation Hospital/Command Surgeon, Seoul, Korea; Deputy Commander for Clinical Services, Tripler Army Medical Center, Honolulu, Hawaii; Assistant Chief, Cardiothoracic Surgery, Brooke Army Medical Center, Fort Sam Houston, Texas; Staff General Surgeon/Chief, General Surgery Clinic, DeWitt Army Hospital, Fort Belvoir, Va.; and General Surgery Resident, Brooke Army Medical Center, Fort Sam Houston, Texas.
After retiring from the Army, Dr. Peake served as Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Project Hope, a non-profit international health foundation operating in more than 30 countries. While at Project HOPE he helped to orchestrate the use of civilian volunteers aboard the Navy Hospital Ship Mercy as it responded to the Tsunami disaster in Indonesia and also as part of the Hurricane Katrina response aboard the Hospital Ship Comfort.
Daniel L. Cohen, M.D
Dr. Cohen has a distinguished career as a Department of Defense military physician whose culminant responsibilities were as Chief Medical Officer and Executive Medical Director of the Department of Defense TRICARE program at the Pentagon supervising clinical benefits and quality of healthcare services provided to over 9,000,000 beneficiaries worldwide. In this capacity he was responsible for oversight of clinical quality across the spectrum of care in military hospitals and clinics and the complex contracted purchased care programs. As Director, Office of the Chief Medical Officer he supervised the Department of Defense Patient Safety Program and development of the Population Health and Medical Management Program, the DoD initiative. In addition, Dr. Cohen served as the Dean for Student Development, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Bethesda, Maryland.
Dr. Cohen’s military career of nearly 30 years consisted of numerous clinical, academic, administrative and operational assignments including that of senior US military medical commander (Commander, 39th Tactical Group Air Transportable Hospital) deployed in support of the Kurdistan Refugee Emergency in the aftermath of Gulf War I in March 1991. It was during this deployment that Dr. Cohen acquired intimate first-hand experience with the impact of ethnic population control policies and genocidal actions on humankind. Dr. Cohen’s breadth of experiences thus includes public health, emergency medical planning and deployment/refugee medicine.
Dr. Cohen retains adjunct faculty appointments at both the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, F. Edward Hébert School of Medicine, Bethesda, Maryland in the Department of Pediatrics and at the University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland in the Department of Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics and has previously held appointments at Harvard Medical School, Eastern Virginia Medical School and Cambridge University in the United Kingdom. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics (FAAP) and a Senior Fellow of the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health of the United Kingdom (FRCPCH).
James Ecklund, MD
Dr. Ecklund is Chairman of the Department of Neurosciences at Inova Fairfax Hospital, Falls Church, Virginia. Dr. Ecklund served as Professor and Chairman of the Neurosurgery Program of the National Capital Consortium which includes Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. and National Naval Medical Center and the Uniformed Services University in Bethesda, Maryland from 1998-2007. He obtained his undergraduate education at the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. He attended medical school at the Uniformed Services University and subsequently completed neurosurgical residency at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in 1993. After residency he served as Assistant Chief and Chief of Neurosurgery at Fitzsimons Army Medical Center in Denver, Colorado. He returned to Walter Reed in 1996 and subsequently became the Chief & Residency Program Director of the Walter Reed Neurosurgical Service one year later. In 1998 the Walter Reed and National Naval programs merged into the National Capital Consortium Neurosurgery Program and he assumed the position of Chairman which he still held until coming to his current position at IFH.
Dr. Ecklund is a general neurosurgeon with primary clinic interests in neurotrauma, complex spine, and cerebrovascular disease. His research interests include neurotrauma with an emphasis on blast and penetrating injury. He directs a neurotrauma laboratory at the Uniformed Services University, has over 100 publications and abstracts, and has lectured throughout the world in over 10 different countries. He serves as a reviewer for the Journal of Trauma, Neurosurgery, and Physiological Measurement. Until his recent retirement, he held the rank of COL in the U.S Army, and was deployed as a Neurosurgeon to both Afghanistan and Iraq. His Neurosurgery Program has received the vast majority of the American neurotrauma casualties from the Global War on Terrorism.
Dr. Ecklund has held numerous leadership positions within neurosurgical and national organizations including Chairman of the Membership Committee for the AANS, Chairman of the Joint Committee for Military Neurosurgeons of the AANS and CNS, President of the Washington Academy of Neurosurgery, and Program Director for the 11-19th International Spine and Peripheral Nerve workshops. He serves on the Committee of Trauma for the American College of Surgeons, and is the Chairman of the Board for the Hugh and Carolyn Shelton Military Neurotrauma Foundation. He also serves on multiple oversight and advisory boards for the Veterans Administration, Department of Defense, National Institutes of Health, NATO, Neurotrauma Foundation, and Brain Trauma Foundation.
Dr. Ecklund has been awarded the LTG William H. Arnold award and the AUSA award for “best exemplifying the traditions of the U.S. Military Academy and the U.S. Army.” He received the General Graves B. Erksine award as the Outstanding Resident at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the USU Emerging Technologies Award, and the General George Hayes Award for the Outstanding Neurosurgery Faculty Member. He has been awarded the “A” Designator by the Surgeon General of the Army for excellence in neurosurgery, inducted into the Society for Military Medical Merit, and elected into the Society of Neurological Surgeons.
Ed Michelson, MD FACEP
Dr. Michelson is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, and director of the emergency department at University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland Ohio. Dr. Michelson, a native of Baltimore, Maryland, completed his undergraduate training in applied biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge MA. He then completed his medical degree at Washington University in St. Louis. His post graduate medical education was a combined residency in both internal medicine and emergency medicine at the McGaw Medical Center of Northwestern University, Chicago, IL.
Dr. Michelson has practiced academic emergency medicine for the last 28 years holding the position of assistant professor and associate director of the ED at University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Montefiore Hospital, Pittsburgh PA. He then went back to Northwestern University where he was associate professor of medicine and the program director for emergency medicine at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, followed by the director of clinical operations at NMH.
In 2002, Dr. Michelson was recruited to University Hospitals and Case Western to build a new academic department of emergency medicine at UH, design and build a new Center for Emergency Medicine, and to start a new EM residency training program. He has an interest in EMS, toxicology as well as computers and technology applications in medical education and health care delivery.
Dighton C. Packard, MD
Dr. Packard has practiced emergency medicine for more than 30 years. Dr. Packard serves as the chairman of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, Texas, and is a member of the Board of Trustees for Baylor University Medical Center. Dr. Packard also serves as Chief Medical Officer of Emergency Medical Services Corporation. He received his BS from Baylor University at Waco, Texas, and his MD from the University of Texas Medical School at San Antonio.
Steven Schachter, MD
Dr. Schachter is Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School and Director of Research for Neurology and Vice Chair of the Committee for Clinical Investigations at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. He is the Chief Academic Officer at the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology in Boston, Massachusetts.
Dr. Schachter received his medical degree from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, OH. He completed a neurology residency at the Harvard-Longwood Neurological Program.
Andrew M. Tucker, M.D.
Dr. Tucker, a prominent sports health expert, is the Head Team Physician for the Baltimore Ravens of the National Football League (NFL) and serves on several NFL advisory and subcommittees focused on performance enhancing agents, mild traumatic brain injury, and cardiovascular health. Dr. Tucker serves as the President of the NFL Physicians Society.
In addition to his NFL medical appointments, Dr. Tucker has an active community-based clinical practice with offices in the Baltimore metropolitan region. He provides care for active patients of all ages, including athletes at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Loyola College, and Coppin State College, with sports and exercise related medical conditions. Dr. Tucker is a diplomat of the American Academy of Family Physicians and maintains a certificate of added qualification in sports medicine. He is published in medical journals and has written book chapters on a variety of sports health topics, including concussion, preparticipation examinations, and musculoskeletal injuries and disorders.
Prior to joining UMH, Dr. Tucker was the Director of Primary Care Sports Medicine at the University of Maryland Medical Center, and Assistant Professor, Department of Family Medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Previously, he served as a team physician for the Cleveland Browns, a staff physician in the Department of Orthopedics at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, and Assistant Clinical Professor for Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio.
Dr. Tucker received his medical degree from Southern Illinois University in Springfield, Illinois and went on to complete two fellowships. He completed a primary care sports medicine fellowship at the Alabama Sports Medicine and Orthopaedic Center in Birmingham, Alabama, and a sports medicine fellowship at the Bowman Gray School of Medicine/Carolina Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.