Gerald Parker

Gerald Parker ( veterinarian,  health official)
Nationality	US
Alma mater	•  Texas A&M University College of Veterinary Medicine •  Baylor College of Medicine Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences •  Industrial College of the Armed Forces
Member of	Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense
Interests	One Health
Head the White House's pandemic office In office 2025 - Present Employer Donald Trump/Second presidency  Senior advisor In office August 2020 - February 2021 Employer Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response Appointed by Robert Kadlec  Associate Dean for Global One Health Dates unknown Employer Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs Location Texas A&M University  Deputy assistant secretary for preparedness and response Dates unknown Employer Department of Health and Human Services

Gerald Parker is spooky US veterinarian and top-ranking federal health bureaucrat. Parker has worked for the Departments of Defense, Health and Human Services and Homeland Security. In February 2025, President Trump selected Parker, to head the White House's pandemic office.

Under President Bush, 43, we embarked on an aggressive pandemic preparedness strategy implementation plan. Congress appropriated $7 billion through an emergency supplemental that was requested by President Bush. I was in the Department of Health and Human Services as a deputy assistant secretary for preparedness and response, so I helped develop part of that. But it was a whole-government effort- actually, a whole-society effort. It included state governments, local governments, tribal governments, private sector, NGOs. It was extremely aggressive.

Education

Parker is a graduate of Texas A&M University College of Veterinary Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, and the Industrial College of the Armed Forces.

Career

In the U.S. Department of Defense, he was deputy assistant for chemical and biological defense. And at the Department of Health and Human Services, he led efforts to prepare for public health emergencies.

Parker was the Associate Dean for Global One Health at the School of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and Director, Pandemic Preparedness and Biosecurity Policy Program at the Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs within the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University.

Angela Clendenin, an epidemiologist who interview him in April 2020, described him as:

I like to think he was the inspiration for Bryan Cranston's character in Contagion

Covid

We are going to have to do more on environmental disinfection on much more regular basis. You see pictures in China and other countries were disinfecting you know say subway transportation type vehicles and in airplanes we're gonna have to do that a lot more after we get beyond the mitigation phase and I think that's going to be a one-one great place where robotics will play a key role.

using artificial intelligence to combat what I call 'infodemics' we are in a pandemic but we also suffer from an infodemic as well with so much misinformation and so I think that's where I think artificial intelligence coupled with robotics can be a dissemination of authoritative information and actually encounter the misinformation that's coming from all directions as it is well it enforcement.

We have to take pendant with preparedness and emerging infectious diseases as a national security issue, these high consequence infectious diseases we really have to have the political will to invest so this never happens again. And we can do that. We have tools and technologies, but we have to have a political will to do it.

Wastewater surveillance

I think Covid 19 did tell us wastewater surveillance is actually really good, it sounds simple but it's extremely novel approach to do genomic surveillance of wastewater and and certainly we need to turn the the gain up for that and Monkeypox and other other infectious diseases as well. So I think we're going to see a lot more about some national strategies, state strategies, and how we can take advantage to leverage wastewater surveillance in the in the future...and that could help too with people that maybe are asymptomatic so they're not going to get tested it would help with underreporting as well.

One Health

whether you believe in global warming or not, the climate is changing and will have an impact on emerging infectious diseases pressures on human and animal health. There's changes in land habitats land use the changing animal vector vectors are changing animals and people are living in close proximity.

Global health security agenda must go beyond public health

Slide from his 2018 lecture at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on "Health Security"

Slide from his 2018 lecture at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on military support to global health

Slide from his 2018 lecture at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on the "defense sectors'" role in "Health Security"

The global health security agenda must go beyond public health and this is where I'm encouraging the national security and the laboratory to step up to the plate here, this is an area that really has to go this is much bigger than than public health. In the developing world is much bigger than in ministries of health. It has to expand into defense, foreign affairs, law enforcement to close some of these gaps. The international security policy community must be engaged in this effort and I've talked to my colleagues in the military, and this is actually not something new to the medical community and Department of Defense. The Department of Defense has been engaged in global health engagement a long time. It's often where where some of the political dialogue breaks down the Surgeon General's and the medical community and the scientific community and the DoD actually can still have a dialogue, and so there's a lot of things that we do in global engagement that our other militaries ought to mirror, and they include humanitarian aid, food security, disaster response and so forth, but it just needs to be recast in this construct of global health security do defense can do even a lot more I believe in what I not soft power but smart power, by engaging engaging in global health

we're gonna have to solve that problem how we're gonna talk to the next militaries that may be an emergency operation center, be it they may be Russia or China, and Department and Health Affairs and DoD is doing this. They are a big champion of global health security agenda.

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