In this episode, we discuss NCSE with LTC (ret) Roderick Fontenette.

Dr. Roderick Fontenette is a board-certified Emergency Medicine and Critical Care Medicine physician. He completed his undergraduate degree in Psychology from the University of Maryland University College Asian Division while serving on active duty in the United States Air Force in Misawa, Japan. He attended medical school at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in Shreveport, LA. He completed emergency medicine residency training at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in partnership with the Boonshoft School of Medicine at Wright State University in Dayton, OH and Critical Care fellowship training with Indiana University Health at Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis, IN. He completed his Master of Health Care Management from the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. His most recent Air Force assignment was as the Associate Program Director for one of the Air Force's four Emergency Medicine residency programs partnered with UC Davis Medical Center Department of Emergency Medicine in Sacramento, CA. Dr. Fontenette recently retired from the Air Force after serving 21 years on active duty. During his time on active duty, he completed several deployments to locations such as Afghanistan, Djibouti, Kuwait, Turkey, and Germany, where he provided critical care air transport. He served as the Critical Care Air Transport Team Theater Director during the Afghanistan drawdown and provided high acuity transport for joint and international forces. He now works as the Medical Director of the Intensive Care Unit at St. Helena Hospital in the Napa Valley and does academic Emergency Medicine at UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, CA. He has lectured nationally and internationally on a wide range of emergency medicine and critical care medicine topics and has an interest in neurologic emergencies and resuscitative medicine.

Further Resources:

1. NCSE Edu - https://ncse-edu.com/
2. Neurocritical Care Society - https://www.neurocriticalcare.org/
3. Brain Trauma Foundation - https://braintrauma.org/
4. AHA Post resuscitation guidelines - https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIR.0000000000001375https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIR.0000000000001375

Dr. Rozel has been working in emergency mental health since 1990 and serves as the Medical Director of resolve Crisis Services and the Clinical Chief of Crisis Services at UPMC Western Behavioral Health. He is also the founder and co-director of the UPMC Systemwide Threat Assessment and Response Team. Dr. Rozel divides his time between emergency psychiatry and violence work and is a past president of the American Association for Emergency Psychiatry.

Dr. Rozel trains and consults with teams across UPMC and the world on projects related to violence and threat management, staff injury prevention, firearm injury prevention, and crisis and emergency psychiatry. He has served as an incident commander for mass shootings and been involved in the behavioral health response to several mass casualty events. He is a member of the Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium at the Rockefeller Institute of Government and has contributed to major policy efforts including the National Council for Mental Wellbeing’s reports on Mass Violence, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline’s violence management guidelines, the AMA et al’s Amici brief for the NYSRPA v Bruen case before the Supreme Court, the FBI / American Hospital Association’s Behavioral Threat Assessment and Management Compendium, and ASIS International’s Workplace Violence and Active Shooter standards.

Dr. Rozel serves the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania as a member the Mental Health and Justice Advisory Committee for the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency, the Threat Assessment Steering Committee for the Office of Homeland Security, and the Allegheny County Child Death Review Team.

Dr. Rozel is board certified in general, child, and forensic psychiatry. He earned a bachelor’s in Biomedical Ethics and an MD at Brown University and a Master of Studies in Law from the University of Pittsburgh where he also completed his general psychiatry residency and child and forensic psychiatry fellowships at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic of UPMC. Dr. Rozel is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, an Honorary Member of the American College of Emergency Physicians, and has received awards from the National Alliance on Mental Illness, CIT International, the Allegheny County Medical Society, and the Pittsburgh Psychiatric Society.

Links:

Evaluating threats of mass shootings in the psychiatric setting https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09540261.2021.1947784

The Prevention Practitioners Network https://eradicatehatesummit.org/prevention-practitioners-network/

In this episode, we interview Dr. Nicole Baumgarth about the increasing spread of tick-borne diseases. 

Nicole Baumgarth is an immunologist and the director of the Lyme and Tickborne Diseases Research and Education Institute at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Following a DVM and PhD degree obtained in Germany and post doctoral training in Australia and at Stanford University, she started her own research program at the University of California Davis, where her lab studied immune responses to infections, among them Borrelia burgdorferi, the causative agent of Lyme disease. In 2022 she moved her lab to Johns Hopkins, where she
now working to establish a broad research program that works on solutions towards better preventions and prophylaxes, diagnoses, and cures for tickborne illnesses.

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In this episode, we interview Dana Grueser about her experiences with Nihilistic Violent Extremism (NVE), including the 764 Network, as well as the red flags that physicians should look out for.

Dana Grueser is a parent advocate and public speaker who nearly lost her son after algorithms drove him to Nihilistic Violent Extremism networks that groom minors toward violence and self-harm. After fighting to get her son the help he needed — and encountering professionals who missed the warning signs — she now speaks and writes to help parents, educators, and frontline providers to recognize the behavioral and digital red flags of online radicalization and exploitation before they escalate to crisis. She also advocates at the state and federal level for stronger child online safety legislation.

Dana Grueser's Substack: https://substack.com/@slowtechrevolution

Resources:

1. Letgrow.org
2. www.protectyoungeyes.com
3. Smartphonefreechildhood.org
4. Wearemama.org

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In this episode, we discuss the concept of narrative warfare and how it pertains to military providers with Dr. Ajit Maan. 

Ajit Maan, Ph.D. specializes in Narrative Warfare and Strategic Influence in large scale conflict.

She is currently:
-Professor of Practice, Master’s Program, Politics and Global Security, Arizona State University
- Faculty, Future Security Initiative, Arizona State University
- Adjunct Professor, Joint Special Operations University
- Founder, Narrative Strategies LLC
- President, Military Writers Guild
- Editorial Adviser, PRISM, Irregular Warfare Center, United States Department of War
- Chair, Narrative Strategies Vertical, Homeland Security Today

She is the author of five books:
1. Internarrative Identity
2. Internarrative Identity: Placing the Self
3. Counter-Terrorism: Narrative Strategies
4. Plato’s Fear
5. Narrative Warfare

And Editor of two books:
1. Soft Power on Hard Problems: Strategic Influence in Irregular Warfare
2. Dangerous Narratives: Warfare, Strategy, Statecraft

In addition to her books, Dr. Maan’s articles have appeared in Foreign Policy, Homeland Security Today, Special Operations Forces News, Real Clear Defense, The Strategy Bridge, Small Wars Journal, Defense and Intelligence Norway, Stars and Stripes, The Indian Defense Review, The Indian Military Review, Narrative and Conflict: Explorations in Theory and Practice, Philosophical Practice, and other academic and military strategy journals world-wide.

Awards:
2019 Most innovative Campaign to Forward Mission, Homeland Security Today
2025 Trailblazer Award, Homeland Security Today

Dr. Maan's Amazon page can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B001KH6DOY/allbooks?ingress=0&visitId=4fb388cf-7fc4-4f99-9131-25ac1e0ed318&ref_

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In this episode, we interview Dr. Dominique Wong, an expert in the intersection of homeland security and emergency medicine. 

Dominique Wong M.D. is an emergency physician with expertise in disaster, event and tactical medicine, and a particular interest in the nexus of medicine and homeland security. She serves as chair of her hospital's Medical Readiness Committee, works extensively in hospital disaster preparedness and mass casualty planning, and has experience as a tactical physician and law enforcement high threat medicine educator.
Dr. Wong is active nationally in disaster and tactical and law enforcement medicine and also contributes to public health and biodefense initiatives as a consultant for wastewater surveillance for biothreat detection. She is a co-facilitator and speaker for the Naval Postgraduate School, Center for Homeland Defense and Security and holds degrees from Cornell University and The Ohio State University College of Medicine.

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In this episode, we interview Dr. Brian Strickland, a current EM physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and an expert in wilderness medicine, about his experiences in austere environments such as Ukraine. 

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In this episode, we interview Heidi Beirich, Ph.D, founder of the Global Project against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE), which monitors and counters increasingly transnational hate movements. Today, we discuss the increasing danger of online extremist movements, including Nihilistic Violent Extremism (NVE), the 764 Movement, and the increasingly dangerous True Crime Community (TCC).

This interview was recorded and produced before federal charges against Heidi Beirich were announced on August 12, 2026. Her participation in this program does not constitute an endorsement. The charges are allegations and have not been adjudicated.

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In this episode, we interview Lt. Cmdr. Jesse Wang, a Navy EM physician of Explosive Ordinance Group 1, who served as the lead for the dive medical team tasked with the Artemis II recovery on April 10, 2026. 

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In this episode, we interview Dr. Stuart Harris. Dr. Harris is the founder and Chief of the Massachusetts General Hospital Division of Wilderness Medicine, and the Director of the MGH Wilderness Medicine Fellowship. He is a full-time attending physician in the MGH Emergency Department and an Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He graduated from the Harvard Affiliated Emergency Medicine Residency in 2003. He has been conducting research with the Himalayan Rescue Association in the Mt. Everest region since 1999 and the U.S. Army’s Research Institute for Environmental Medicine since 2004, and is currently working on the next edition of Auerbach’s Wilderness Medicine . 

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