David Goldman, MD

Class Year

1988

Affiliation

Alumni

Posted on: August 8, 2017

David Goldman, MD ’88, was promoted to Rear Admiral and Assistant Surgeon General in the US Public Health Service on January 1, 2017.

RADM David Goldman is currently the Assistant Administrator for the Office of Public Health Science at the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s public health agency. In this role he is one of approximately 20 executives managing FSIS and its nearly 10,000 employees and budget of $1 billion. He was formerly Director of the Human Health Sciences Division at FSIS. He served as the FSIS Acting Administrator from January 2007 through July 2007. He also serves, since 2011, as one of the USDA Secretary’s designees to the National Prevention Council.

RADM Goldman joined the Commissioned Corps of the Public Health Service, and FSIS, in February 2002. Prior to that he spent 3 ½ years at the Virginia Department of Health, first as a District Health Director in Fredericksburg, Va., then briefly as the Deputy State Epidemiologist. As District Health Director, he led a staff of approximately 100 public health professionals serving 250,000 people in five jurisdictions, providing a full range of public health services. While Health Director, RADM Goldman began volunteering at the local free clinic, and continues to see patients there one day a month.

RADM Goldman started his medical career with 10 years in the US Army Medical Corps, practicing both family medicine and preventive medicine. He is board-certified in both Family Medicine and General Preventive Medicine/Public Health. His assignments in the Army included Officer-in-Charge of a Troop Medical Clinic, faculty for a Family Medicine residency program, and Command Surgeon for a Department of Defense agency that monitored the U.S. arms control treaties with other countries.

RADM Goldman was an original member of PHS-1 Rapid Deployment Force, from 2006-2009, and is currently a member of the Regional Incident Support Team-3.

He has participated in two major emergency response deployments: the USNS Mercy response to the tsunami in Indonesia in 2005; and the response to Hurricane Ike at the Federal Medical Station in College Station, TX, September 2008, during which he served as food safety supervisor and then as chief medical officer.

RADM Goldman has been the Surgeon General’s Policy Advisory Committee representative for USDA since 2005, and is the senior Commissioned Corps officer at USDA. In addition he served a four-year term on the Physicians Professional Advisory Committee (PPAC), 2008-2011, and was the Chair of the PPAC Promotion Guidelines subcommittee for three years. In 2013, the Surgeon General appointed him as the Chief Professional Officer for Commissioned Corps physicians, for a four-year term.

He received his Bachelor of Arts from the University of Virginia in 1979, a Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Virginia in 1988, and his Master of Public Health in Epidemiology from the University of Washington in 1996.

RADM Goldman and his wife Frances live in Alexandria, Va. Their son, Joshua, daughter-in-law, Maureen, and grandson, Caleb, live in Arlington, Va. Their daughter, Hannah, lives in New York City.