The Honorable S. Ward Casscells, MD

Professor of Medicine and Public Health, Vice President for External Relations and Public Policy at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston; Senior Scholar, Texas Heart Institute

The Honorable S. Ward Casscells, MD, is the Tyson Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Public Health, and Vice President for External Relations and Public Policy at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, and Senior Scholar at the Texas Heart Institute.

From April 2007 through April 2009 he served as the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Health Affairs) where he was credited with turning around a struggling $45 billion health and education system with 137,000 employees, 10 million patients in 900 clinics and hospitals in 100 countries. For this work Dr. Casscells received the Department of Defense's highest civilian award - the Distinguished Public Service Medal and the Surgeon General's Medallion from the Department of Health and Human Services.

Dr. Casscells graduated Yale College and Harvard Medical School (magna cum laude). He trained in medicine and cardiology at Beth Israel, Brigham and Women's, and Massachusetts General Hospitals, the Harvard School of Public Health, National Institutes of Health, and Scripps.

His published research is in the areas of prevention of heart attack and stroke, Bayesian decision-making, medical ethics, influenza and emergency preparedness, nanotechnology, and healthcare management. He also speaks publicly about living with cancer. An inventor, he has founded several successful companies, including Volcano Corporation, and served on numerous civic, corporate, and professional boards, and has been elected to a number of honorary societies.

His recent book, When It Mattered Most, a tribute to medics killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, was termed by Newsweek's Evan Thomas, "a noble work".

A colonel in the Army Reserve, Dr. Casscells served in Iraq in 2006, earning the Joint Commendation Medal and honorary membership in the Iraqi Medical Regiment.

He, his wife and three children are Texans, living in exile in Washington, DC.