Governor Maura Healey said Monday she tapped a Mass General Brigham doctor to be the state’s new veterans services secretary, turning again to an emergency medicine physician to lead the office responsible for managing the state’s veterans’ homes.
Eric Goralnick, a US Navy veteran, will join Healey’s Cabinet in February, according to her office. Goralnick has served as the director of military and veterans initiatives for Mass General Brigham, according to his LinkedIn account, and is an associate professor at Harvard Medical School.
Goralnick will remain at Mass General Brigham until he is sworn in on Feb. 23. He’ll then continue doing what Healey aides described as “limited clinical and research work” on a part-time basis once he joins her administration.
Goralnick will succeed Jon Santiago, an emergency room doctor and a major in the US Army Reserve who left Healey’s Cabinet in the fall, and returned to his shifts at Boston Medical Center. Goralnick will be the second person to fill the secretary role since a 2022 law elevated it to a Cabinet-level position.
In a statement, Healey cited Goralnick’s experience as both a physician and a veteran.
“Dr. Goralnick understands that veterans deserve care that meets them where they are,” Healey said in a statement. “He brings deep experience as a physician, a leader and a collaborator, and he has spent his career strengthening systems.”
The position of veterans services secretary was elevated to the governor’s Cabinet under a 2022 law that responded to governance and operational shortcomings that proved fatal during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly at the state-run soldiers’ homes in Holyoke and Chelsea.
More than 100 residents of the two homes died during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Globe reported.
Goralnick has served in various roles at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Mass General Brigham, according to Healey’s office. He’s currently listed as the “civilian military advisor” at the Gillian Reny Stepping Strong Center for Trauma Innovation and previously was the medical director of emergency preparedness at the Brigham.
He also served as a medical director at large-scale mass vaccination sites the state set up during the COVID-19 pandemic, and in 2022, recorded a video intended to help teach Ukrainians how to respond to traumatic injuries during the war against Russia. (Goralnick is of Ukrainian descent.)
Goralnick has also served as a senior adviser to Home Base, a nonprofit run by the Red Sox Foundation and Mass General Brigham.
Home Base expanded its facility in the Charlestown Navy Yard in 2024 to include a third floor, creating clinical space to focus on special operations veterans who have neurological, psychological, and physical conditions related to traumatic brain injuries, the Globe reported.
Retired US Army Brigadier General Jack Hammond, executive director of the Home Base program, said Goralnick will bring “exactly the kind of leadership veterans need in this moment.”
“He understands both the realities of military service and the urgency of delivering high-quality, accessible care to veterans and their families,” Hammond said.
The office of veterans services oversees the state’s veterans’ programs and manages two state-run homes in Holyoke and Chelsea. The state is currently constructing a new $483 million facility in Holyoke and built a new $200 million site in Chelsea to replace two aging buildings that, in years past, had also been hobbled by tragedy, mismanagement, and poor standards of living.
Soon after being sworn in as governor in 2023, Healey fired Eric Johnson, the head of the Chelsea Soldiers Home, a day after the Globe reported on large overtime payments to the home’s director of nursing. A week earlier, the state Inspector General’s office published a letter citing poor conditions at the Chelsea facility, the Globe reported.
Tommy Lyons, chair of the board of Trustees for the Chelsea home, said in a statement released by Healey’s office that the state’s veterans need a strong advocate for improving their access to health care.
“I believe Eric Goralnick will be that leader,” Lyons said.
Matt Stout can be reached at matt.stout@globe.com. Follow him @mattpstout.