CAPTAIN AARON D. WERBEL, Ph.D.

Commanding Officer, Navy Medicine Readiness and Training Command Lemoore United States Navy

     Captain Aaron Werbel assumed the duties of commanding officer, Navy Medicine Readiness and Training Command Lemoore and director, Naval Health Clinic Lemoore in September 2023. He is responsible for the healthcare and deployment medical readiness of 18,000 beneficiaries on the Navy's largest master jet base in Lemoore, CA, the Top Gun Naval Aviation Warfighter Development Center in Fallon, NV, and the Naval Post Graduate School, Monterey, CA.

    Immediately prior to his current assignment, CAPT Werbel served as executive officer, Navy Medicine Readiness and Training Command Twentynine Palms and deputy director, Naval Hospital Twentynine Palms. Naval Hospital Twentynine Palms is a community hospital that supports the largest U.S. Marine Corps training base in the world, the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center. Offering air-to-ground live-fire training, this base is located in Twentynine Palms, California, and occupies 1,100 square miles in the Mojave Desert. He was also responsible for healthcare on the Navy's largest installation in China Lake, CA and the Marine Corps' elite cold weather training base in Bridgeport, CA.

    Previously, CAPT Werbel served on the board of directors of the Alexander T. Augusta Military Medical Center in Fort Belvoir, Virginia, where he was the director for behavioral health leading a team of over 200 staff in 14 inpatient, outpatient and partial hospitalization clinics. He was the behavioral health market service leader for the National Capitol Region-Medical Directorate facilitating standardized processes and access to care for beneficiaries in 81 clinics across 17 medical treatment facilities in the region. He also represented the Defense Health Agency Large Markets on the Military Health System’s Behavioral Health Clinical Community implementing the principles of high reliability organizations to behavioral health in the Department of Defense Healthcare Network.

    CAPT Werbel also served as the chief of staff, Healthcare Operations (N3), Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery (BUMED) where he led a staff of 270 to ensure smooth operations in Navy Medicine’s 27 global treatment facilities, directing policy development to guide 63,000 providers in their care for over 2.7 million beneficiaries worldwide. During this tour he also served as the interim assistant deputy chief BUMED and the Navy liaison officer to the DHA governance system in support of the Navy surgeon general and deputy surgeon general. Past assignments included: director, Midshipmen Development Center, United States Naval Academy; acting senior medical officer and ship’s psychologist, USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69); behavioral health affairs officer, Headquarters, United States Marine Corps (Manpower & Reserve Affairs), Quantico, Virginia; department head, mental health and substance abuse rehabilitation program, U.S. Naval Hospital, Naples, Italy; and staff psychologist, mental health and internal medicine HIV/AIDS clinic, National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, Maryland. 

    A native of Ann Arbor, Michigan, Captain Werbel received his Bachelor of Science with honors in psychology from the University of Michigan (1988), and a Master of Arts, and Doctor of Philosophy in Clinical Psychology from Michigan State University (1993, 1997). He was commissioned as an officer in the United States Navy in 1996 and completed his pre-doctoral clinical internship at the National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, Maryland in 1997.