Deputy Director for Preparedness Planning
Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response
| Rear Admiral Ann Knebel is the Deputy Director for Preparedness Planning in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR), United States Department of Health and Human Services. In this capacity, she serves as a principal advisor to the Deputy Assistant Secretary and the Assistant Secretary on emergency preparedness planning, operational readiness, mass casualty support, and the planning elements of the Secretary's Operations Center. She is responsible for the development of programs to enhance integrated preparedness across the local/state/regional/Tribal and Federal tiers of response in supporting the ASPR goals of community preparedness, partnerships, and enhancing Federal response capability. In the eight years RADM Knebel has worked for ASPR (formerly OPHEP), she has been instrumental in advancing various preparedness planning and surge capacity initiatives. |
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Highlights include: developing publications that have had a national impact on preparedness such as a handbook on medical surge capacity and capability and planning guidance on allocation of scarce resources. She assisted the Greek Ministry of Health to prepare for the 2004 Summer Olympics and served a 9-month detail with the New York City Office of Emergency Management to develop bioterrorism plans. During response operations RADM Knebel serves as the plans section chief on the HHS Emergency Management Group, helping to plan the Federal public health and medical response and recovery. RADM Knebel serves on expert panels that influence international approaches to preparedness such as a World Health Organization-sponsored virtual advisory group on mass gathering preparedness.
Education/Training
RADM Knebel received her Baccalaureate Degree in Nursing in 1981 and a Masters of Nursing Science in 1985 from the University of Evansville, IN. She completed a Doctorate of Nursing Science at the University of California, San Francisco in 1990.
Professional History
Prior to joining ASPR, RADM Knebel served in both the intramural and extramural programs at the National Institutes of Health, with a primary focus on advancing policy initiatives and developing research programs for symptom management, quality of life and end of life issues. RADM Knebel responded to the first aid stations at the World Trade Center in response to the 9-11 attacks and to the newly formed HHS Command Center during the Anthrax attacks of 2001. She serves, or has served on national committees including: Founding member and first Chair of the Trans-HHS End-of-Life Research Interest Group, Board of Directors of the Respiratory Nursing Society, American Association of Critical Care Nurses National Study Group on Weaning from Mechanical Ventilation, and the Medical and Scientific Advisory Committee of the National Alpha-1 Foundation. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing.
Awards
RADM Knebel is the recipient of numerous awards and special honors, including PHS Outstanding Service Medals, the Office of the Chief Nurse Faye G. Abdellah Publication Award, the Hasselmeyer Award for Research Initiatives and the NIH Clinical Center Distinguished Nurse Award. In 2008 she was one of the first recipients of the Hubert H. Humphrey Award for Service to America. The American Thoracic Society twice awarded her the Marilyn Hansen Meritorious Nursing Research Award.