Strategies to Protect the Health of Deployed U.S. Forces

Medical Surveillance, Record Keeping, and Risk Reduction

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• Publisher: National Academies Press
• Year: 1999
• eBook ISBN:
  9780309172523
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Medicine

Nine years after Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm (the Gulf War) ended in June 1991, uncertainty and questions remain about illnesses reported in a substantial percentage of the 697, 000 service members who were deployed. Even though it was a short conflict with very few battle casualties or immediately recognized disease or non-battle injuries, the events of the Gulf War and the experiences of the ensuing years have made clear many potentially instructive aspects of the deployment and its hazards. Since the Gulf War, several other large deployments have also occurred, including deployments to Haiti and Somalia. Major deployments to Bosnia, Southwest Asia, and, most recently, Kosovo are ongoing as this report is written. This report draws on lessons learned from some of these deployments to consider strategies to protect the health of troops in future deployments. In the spring of 1996, Deputy Secretary of Defense John White met with leadership of the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine to explore the prospect of an independent, proactive effort to learn from lessons of the Gulf War and to develop a strategy to better protect the health of troops in future deployments.

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• Strategies to Protect the Health of Deployed U.S. Forces: Medical Surveillance, Record Keeping, and Risk Reduction
• Reviewers
• Preface
• Acronyms
• Contents
• Executive Summary
• 1— Introduction
• 2— Risks to Deployed Forces
• 3— Medically Unexplained Symptoms
• 4— Medical Surveillance
• 5— Medical Record Keeping
• 6— Prevention Measures for Deployed Forces
• 7— Postdeployment Reintegration
• 8— Protecting the Health of the Reserve Component
• References
• Appendix A— Population and Need-Based Prevention of Unexplained Physical Symptoms in the Community
• Appendix B— Statement of Task
• Appendix C— Roster and Biographies of Study Team
• Appendix D— Principal Investigators' and Advisors' Meeting Dates and Locations
• Appendix E— Workshop Agendas
• Appendix F— Commissioned Papers
• Appendix G— Acknowledgments
• Appendix H— Department of Defense Directive 6490.2: Joint Medical Surveillance
• Appendix I— Department of Defense Instruction 6490.3 Implementation and Application of Joint Medical Surveillance for Deployments
• Appendix J— Joint Chiefs of Staff Memorandum on Deployment Health Surveillance and Readiness, December 1998