Ronan King (MSEH* 2013) is a Lieutenant Commander (LCDR) in the United States Public Health Service (USPHS). In his current position as a Public Health Consultant for the National Park Service (Interior Regions #7 and 8 [Arizona/Utah], he has the following responsibilities:
- Overseeing the public health operations for 19 National Park Service (NPS) units located in two states: Arizona and Utah – including the iconic Grand Canyon: He provides public health subject matter expertise, response, and education in the areas of food safety, water quality, wastewater disposal, backcountry hygiene, and epidemiology to over 4,000 employees and over 11,000,000 annual visitors to these Park units. Each Officer assigned to a National Park Service region is basically a one-stop public health department for all the entire region.
- Mitigating the spread of Norovirus and other infectious diseases in the NPS backcountry: This is done through inspection of 16 licensed whitewater rafting outfitters on the Colorado River, delivering annual training to industry, and developing national guidance to promote proper sanitation in the absence of physical facilities. He responds to every reported case of Norovirus and reported cases of vector-borne/human illness in the backcountry. He spends one week per year rafting on the Colorado River to assess the backcountry public health operations of Grand Canyon river users.
- Educating park staff and visitors: He provides the park staff and visitors with technical knowledge in food safety, drinking water quality & treatment, effective wastewater treatment and disposal, vector-borne disease prevention, epidemiological response, and emerging public health issues, including racial inequity & climate change.
LCDR King previously held positions as a Training Officer for the National Basic Investigator Training Courses at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) (2015 – 2017) and as an Environmental Health Officer with the Vessel Sanitation Program at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (2017 – 2019). He has various certifications as a Registered Environmental Health Specialist/Registered Sanitarian (REHS/RS), Certified Professional – Food Safety (CP-FS), Certified Pool Operator (CPO), and Cross-Connection Control Specialist.
Environmental Health-Related Accomplishments
LCDR King oversaw the response for the largest Norovirus outbreak in Grand Canyon National Park history, implicating 222 visitors from 34 states and four countries. He coordinated an EpiAid response from CDC to send 3 Epidemic Intelligence Service Officers (EIS) onsite to work with NPS and Coconino County Health and Human Services. This epidemiological investigation was published in the September 22, 2023 issue of CDC’s Mortality and Morbidity Weekly.
He was also deployed to the Navajo Nation in response to COVID-19 to survey homesites and design individual water systems and onsite septic systems to provide water utilities to over 400 homes without services in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. These homesites lacked water and wastewater utilities, which were necessary to promote hygiene and mitigate the spread of disease.
He was selected to represent the National Park Service and the Department of Interior in the new first-ever documentary about the Commissioned Corps of the United States Public Health Service: The Invisible Corps that was recently aired on May 25, 2023.
Interesting Facts about LCDR King
As the only public health officer assigned to the Grand Canyon, it is only fitting that LCDR King is active in the outdoors. He has hiked on every single continent, and recently completed a trek to Everest Base Camp. He hiked with a silverback gorilla family in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and slid down a volcano on a piece of plywood in Nicaragua. The therapeutic aspects of experiencing the outdoors are extremely important to our Nation’s health, and LCDR King is enthusiastic about expanding those opportunities to all Americans.
