[ April 1, 2011 ] At the request of the administrator of the Health Resources and Services Administration, Capt. Mark E. Nehring, DMD, MPH, has agreed to serve as HRSA’s acting chief dental officer while continuing to direct the HRSA Maternal and Child Health Bureau’s oral health program.

Nehring has a wealth of federal government and Department of Health and Human Services experience. He joined the U.S. Public Health Service as a dental officer for the National Health Service Corps in 1981. After clinical assignments in Cairo, Illinois, and Poplar, Mont., he joined the Indian Health Service in 1986 as the director of the Turtle Mountain Health Center Dental Clinic. As part of an initiative in 1988, to revitalize the Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service, Nehring was assigned to the Office of the Surgeon General, Division of Commissioned Personnel, to oversee dental officer staffing and was later selected for Dental Public Health Residency training in 1994, through the Office of the Chief Dental Officer, USPHS. Nehring returned to HRSA in the Maternal and Child Health Bureau in 1994 and held successive leadership roles in Emergency Medical Services for Children, Traumatic Brain Injury and Oral Health.

Nehring received his Doctor of Medical Dentistry degree from the Goldman School of Dental Medicine at Boston University in 1981. He also has a Master of Public Health from Johns Hopkins University, earned in 1992.