A Special Report: The United States Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine

Our business is conducted in three functional areas science and technology, operational support, and aeromedical education and training. Although we are called the USAF School of Aerospace Medicine USAFSAM, most of what we do is science and technology--about 70 of our manpower and about 85 of our budget are invested in science and technology. We do have an operational support role for the U.S. Air Force USAF, and that role is primarily in aerospace medical education, hyperbarics, and epidemiology. And, of course, we have an educational facility, which is here to provide training in aeromedical specialties and subspecialties, rather than general medical education per se. The medical training for the USAF is provided at Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls, Texas--training, for example, the pharmacy technicians, laboratory technicians, and corpsmen who work on the wards. The flight surgeons, their technicians, the aerospace physiologists, the bioenvironmental engineers, and the medical support people who are more related to the operational USAF, are trained here at USAFSAM. Keywords Aeromedical education Aeromedical research Aeromedical training Aerospace medicine Medical research.