Colonel Dr. Henk van der Wal is a senior military leader, healthcare executive and senior researcher with 38 years of experience in Dutch military healthcare. He has served, among other roles, as Command Surgeon of the Royal Netherlands Air Force and, in 2021, as strategic adviser to the Iraqi Deputy Commander of the Armed Forces for training and education within the NATO Mission Iraq. He currently heads the Civil-Military Centre of Expertise for Trauma Care, a partnership between the Netherlands Ministry of Defence and UMC Utrecht, and leads a NATO Research Task Group on value-based healthcare in military health systems. He obtained his doctorate at Erasmus University Rotterdam and is Editor-in-Chief of the Netherlands Military Medical Review Journal (NMGT).