Hope Conference Speakers

LTC Jeffrey Yarvis, PhD, MS

LTC Jeffrey Yarvis, PhD, MS, currently serves as the Deputy Commander for Behavioral Health Service at the new Fort Belvoir Community Hospital and an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. For 25 years LTC Yarvis has been an internationally published scholar in the field of traumatic stress. For his work and research on PTSD, LTC Yarvis was named both 2008 Uniformed Services and US Army Social Worker of the Year. Prior to his arrival in the NCA July 2007, he was the Senior Medical Civil-Military Operations Officer for the Multinational Corps – Iraq and the Assistant Chief of Staff/G-5 and Brigade Social Work Officer for Task Force 30th Medical Brigade at Camp Victory, Baghdad, Iraq where he was responsible for developing the medical engagement strategy for Iraq. He was the principle liaison to the Surgeon General of the Iraqi Armed Forces and the US State Department Health Attaché and was responsible for $70 million in Overseas Humanitarian Disaster and Civic Aid (OHDACA) for Iraqi Medical Infrastructure.

LTC Yarvis enlisted in the Indiana National Guard in 1986 as a Combat Infantryman and received his commission in 1988 as an armor officer and spent six years leading armor crews during the cold war to include a deployment to Iceland.  In 1994 LTC Yarvis entered the Medical Service Corps as a social work officer.  He quickly became a subject matter expert on combat and operational stress (COSC) with deployments with the UN and NATO to Haiti and Bosnia. He executed largely untried COSC doctrine and observed the effects of deployment stress in soldiers from scores of nations.  For these efforts and for disaster relief work following the tornadoes at Jarrell, Texas, he received a special commendation from the Social Work Consultant to the Army Surgeon General and Mental Health Professional of the Year from the Texas (Bell/Coryell Chapter) International Critical Incidence Stress Foundation. LTC Yarvis also serves as an expert in aviation stress, as the US Army’s first aviation social work air crewman.  LTC Yarvis holds the following degrees: BA-Indiana University, M.Ed.-Cambridge College, MSW-Boston College, and PhD-The University of Georgia and is a graduate of the US Army’s Command and General Staff College. 

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