Acting Assistant Secretary of War for Health Affairs
Dr. Stephen Ferrara is the Acting Assistant Secretary of War for Health Affairs. In this role, he is the principal advisor to the Secretary of War and the Undersecretary of War for Personnel and Readiness for all U.S. Department of War (DOW) health and force health protection policies, programs, and activities. He also leads the Military Health System, the DOW’s worldwide health care network that provides medical services to approximately 9.5 million beneficiaries, including active duty service members, military retirees, and their families.
Ferrara is an experienced clinician, combat veteran, educator, and healthcare leader. During his 25-year Navy career, he completed combat, humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, and diplomatic deployments with the U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, and U.S. Marine Corps. In Afghanistan, Ferrara pioneered the introduction of life and limb-saving endovascular surgical techniques to the battlefield.
He held numerous leadership roles within the U.S. Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery ranging from Graduate Medical Education to serving as the Navy's Chief Medical Officer, helping lead a world-class health care system of 63,000 medical professionals. Following his military career, Ferrara led large health care organizations in both the private and public sector, including serving as the Central Intelligence Agency’s Chief Medical Officer.
Ferrara has extensive public and healthcare policy expertise. In addition to holding leadership roles in numerous national specialty societies, he served in the 113th Congress as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation/National Academy of Medicine Congressional Fellow. During his tenure on the Health Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, he helped draft major healthcare legislation while supporting oversight of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and the National Institutes of health.
Ferrara is board-certified in vascular and interventional radiology with subspecialty expertise in pediatric vascular and interventional radiology. He is a renowned expert in treatment of complex congenital vascular malformations and has pioneered novel techniques in repair of intracranial and thoracic vascular anomalies in newborns. He remains clinically active at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and is a Clinical Professor of Radiology and Radiological Sciences at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. Ferrara is an avid author and speaker and has given over 100 national and international lectures and presentations on Interventional Radiology, Health Policy, and Economics.
Ferrara received degrees from the University of California, Los Angeles and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. He completed a surgical internship and diagnostic radiology residency at the Naval Medical Center San Diego before going on to fellowship training in vascular and interventional radiology at the University of California, San Diego, with further pediatric subspecialty training at Boston Children’s Hospital (Harvard Medical School).