Arletta Eldridge Thompson, MEd is currently the Health Promotion Coordinator for the 15 Medial Group Joint Base Pearl Harbor Hickam. She is a certified Exercise Physiologist. Arletta has more than 25 years’ experience serving on 6 Air Force installations. She has worked as an Exercise Physiologist in four Health and Wellness Centers, and one Reserve base.

The wide range of mission capabilities with each assignment has prepared Arletta to be sensitive to each base’s unique mission and ops tempo. She has developed an instinct in flexing and adapting to real time readiness stressors. She uses population health strategies to help optimize mission readiness.

More recently, Arletta has worked extensively with food insecurity in the military. Hawaii’s cost of living is the most expensive in the nation. Increasing housing and food prices heavily impact military family budgets. Most military families and government civilians coming into the state are unprepared.

She has developed a plan to respond to individual emergency crisis, focus on prevention, and provide resources for long term government help. Prevention is targeted to education for basic life skills such as financial counseling, grocery shopping, cooking basics, buying local, preventing food waste, growing your own, and breast-feeding support.

Arletta was awarded the Air Force Achievement medal in July 2022 for her initial work in food insecurity. She chairs the DoD Oahu Food Insecurity Working Group. She currently is collaborating with the Feeding America Military Outreach Network and OneOp to extend their reach into military community food insecurity nationwide.

*Non-financial relationships: No non-financial relationships have been disclosed.