A reception in his honor will be held on Wednesday, Dec. 14, from 3 to 5 p.m. in the Center for Disaster Healthcare Preparedness, TRP III, Suite 1100. This drop-in reception is open to the entire university community.
“My time at South Alabama has been the most rewarding time of my career,” Wallace said. “I’ve been very fortunate for the confidence the university, specifically the College of Medicine, has shown in me and the staff of CDHP. I ask every day how I got so lucky to have the team I do.”
Funded by the Alabama Department of Public Health, the Center for Disaster Healthcare Preparedness provides comprehensive disaster healthcare preparedness training and continuing medical education for Alabama healthcare professionals, healthcare coalition partners, emergency management professionals, volunteers and public officials.
“We’ve been able to build a nationally recognized program from the ground up – only about 10 people came to our first class, and we’re over 20,000 now,” Wallace said. “With where we are today, I’m positively confident that CDHP will continue, and it will only get better as each year passes.”
Wallace said the first class the center offered was a two-day basic course. At the same time, the team was developing the Alabama Incident Management System (AIMS) for the state health department, the state’s online healthcare emergency response situational awareness tool.
“AIMS is still operating today with several thousand users and was the backbone of data collection in Alabama during COVID,” he said. “Alabama, through AIMS, was one of very few states with 100% Alabama hospital compliance in reporting to the Department of Health and Human Resources during COVID, and is recognized nationally as one of the best situational awareness tools of its type.”
Wallace has more than 25 years of experience in public health, emergency preparedness and disaster planning. Prior to joining USA in 2003, he worked 11 years at the Mobile County Health Department as the director of the Bureau of Environmental Health, emergency management and disaster preparedness coordinator, and bioterrorism preparedness coordinator.
He served in the United States Air Force and the Air Force Reserve as a public health officer, readiness officer, mobility officer, medical intelligence officer, WMD training officer and decontamination team chief.
He earned a degree in veterinary medicine from Auburn University and spent five years in veterinary practice for small animal medicine and surgery.
