Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Readiness Policy and Oversight

Tracie Lattimore is currently the Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Readiness Policy and Oversight. In this role, she oversees department-wide initiatives to modernize medical systems and technologies and safeguard the holistic health of 2.3 million service members. Her office develops and implements policies related to combat casualty care, warfighter brain health, force health protection, operational medicine, national disaster support, medical countermeasures, biosurveillance, environmental health, medical research and development, international health agreements, and warfighter medical readiness. Previously, Lattimore served as Executive Director for HRPO, beginning in December 2023.

Lattimore holds a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from the University of Virginia and a Master of Science in Nursing from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She is a doctoral candidate in Health Policy Management and Public Health Leadership at the University of North Carolina’s Gillings School of Global Public Health. Lattimore takes an active role in developing the next generation of science and health leaders, serving as a mentor to several early-career professionals and a member of the Board on Higher Education and Workforce at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Lattimore brings diverse experience in military health, policy, and the biomedical industrial base to her new role as Acting DASD for HRPO. She began her career on active duty in the Navy Nurse Corps at what is now Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, and completed deployments on the USNS Comfort in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Joint Task Force Katrina. She then served in the Navy Reserve and was recalled to active duty twice.

Lattimore served in a variety of medical, policy, and operational roles across the U.S. Army Office of the Surgeon General, the Defense Health Agency, the U.S. Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, and the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs. Her focus was on combat casualty care and operational medicine with particular interest in traumatic brain injury, leading her to serve as the Deputy Director of TBI for the U.S. Navy, and then as Director of TBI for the U.S. Army, before moving to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, where she led initiatives on veteran suicide and brain health.

During her tenure at OSTP she led a broad science and technology policy portfolio encompassing initiatives like the Joint Committee on the Research Environment, and ultimately served as Executive Director of the National Science and Technology Council. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she was detailed from OSTP to the National Response Coordination Center, where she stood up and led the interagency COVID-19 data task force under the Unified Coordination Group. More recently, she served in the White House Office of Management and Budget’s National Security Division, managing oversight and execution of a $100 billion budget. Before rejoining civil service in 2023, she held a leadership role in industry, building public-private partnerships for biosecurity and synthetic biology at Ginkgo Bioworks.