Executive Officer

CAPT Aaron Werbel reported aboard Navy Medicine Readiness and Training Command Twentynine Palms as Executive Officer on September 28, 2021, with the dual title, Deputy Director for 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.
 
CAPT Werbel arrived from the Fort Belvoir Community Hospital in Fort Belvoir, Virginia, where he served on the board of directors and was 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 (MTF) 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 Defense Department’s Healthcare Network.
 
Prior to his assignment at Fort Belvoir, CAPT Werbel served as the Chief of Staff for Healthcare Operations (M3) at the Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery (BUMED) where he led a staff of 270 to ensure smooth operations in Navy Medicine’s 27 MTFs, directing policy development to guide the Navy’s 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 for M3 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 at the United States Naval Academy; Acting Senior Medical Officer and Ship’s Psychologist aboard the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69); Behavioral Health Affairs Officer at Headquarters, United States Marine Corps (Manpower & Reserve Affairs) in Quantico, Virginia; Department Head, Behavioral Healthcare and Substance Abuse Rehabilitation Program at the U.S. Naval Hospital, Naples, Italy; and Staff Psychologist, in Behavioral Health and Internal Medicine Department HIV/AIDS Clinic at the National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, Maryland.
 
Captain Werbel is a member of the American Association of Suicidology and was the founder and chair of the International Task Force on Defense and Police Force Suicide Prevention. He was appointed by the Secretary of Defense as a member of the 2007 DoD Task Force on Mental Health and the 2010 DoD Task Force on the Prevention of Suicide by Members of the Armed Forces.  He was Chair of the HHS sponsored Federal Executive Partners Working Group on Suicide Prevention.
 
Captain Werbel hails from Ann Arbor, Michigan, and received a Bachelor of Science with honors in psychology from the University of Michigan (1988), a Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy in Clinical Psychology from Michigan State University (1993, 1997).  He completed his pre-doctoral clinical internship at the National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, Maryland in 1997.