Military Health Policy Publication Highlights
RAND research on military health policy extends back to the 1990s. Material published since 1998 is available online free of charge.
2012
Assessing Operation Purple: A Program Evaluation of a Summer Camp for Military Youth — 2012
Military family support programs have proliferated in recent years, but there has been little evaluation of whether these programs are meeting their key objectives. To help fill this gap, a RAND study explored the curriculum, themes, and outcomes of Operation Purple, a free weeklong summer camp program for youth with a deployed parent.
Assessment of the Content, Design, and Dissemination of the Real Warriors Campaign — 2012
The Real Warriors Campaign, launched in 2009, is a multimedia program designed to promote resilience, facilitate recovery, and support the reintegration of returning servicemembers, veterans, and their families. This report presents the results of an independent assessment of the campaign.
Bridging the Gap: Prototype Tools to Support Local Disaster Preparedness Planning and Collaboration — 2012
RAND researchers developed an initial prototype tool that focuses on risk-informed, capabilities-based planning to determine (and address gaps in) capabilities and resources a locality will likely require in the event of a disaster, with the prototype focusing on earthquakes, hurricanes, and pandemic influenza. The report also describes two social networking tools for local coordination of disaster preparedness and sharing of resources.
Health and Economic Outcomes in the Alumni of the Wounded Warrior Project — 2012
The Wounded Warrior Project (WWP) provides those injured during service on or after September 11, 2001, access to programs that ensure that wounded warriors are well-adjusted in mind, spirit, and body and that they are economically empowered. Here the authors report a detailed analysis of how alumni were meeting these goals and how their outcomes compared with the outcomes of other veteran and nonveteran U.S. populations.
Healthcare Coverage and Disability Evaluation for Reserve Component Personnel: Research for the 11th Quadrennial Review of Military Compensation — 2012
As part of the 11th Quadrennial Review of Military Compensation, which is investigating the Reserve and National Guard's compensation and benefits, this report analyzes healthcare coverage for RC members, including participation in the TRICARE Reserve Select (TRS) program, potential effects of national health reform on coverage rates, and disability evaluation outcomes for reservists.
Medical Readiness of the Reserve Component — 2012
The reserve components (RCs) must ensure that reservists are not only properly equipped and trained, but also free from health-related conditions that could limit their ability to carry out their duties. This volume identifies existing medical readiness requirements, quantifies current RC medical readiness, identifies obstacles to achieving compliance, and suggests options for improving medical readiness in a cost-effective manner.
2011
Assessing the Performance of Military Treatment Facilities — 2011
Considers potential efforts by the U.S. Department of Defense to assess the performance of military treatment facilities (MTFs) in cost-effectively managing health care. The authors first provide an overview of performance assessment in the nonmilitary health care sector; they then analyze the use of average MTF utilization and costs as performance measures, focusing on how MTF size and catastrophic cases affect these metrics.
Developing a Prototype Handbook for Monitoring and Evaluating Department of Defense Humanitarian Assistance Projects — 2011
Project assessment is central to ensuring that DoD humanitarian assistance projects are compatible with broader policy goals. RAND developed a prototype handbook to provide project staff with an introduction to monitoring and evaluation terms, approaches, and best practices and a step-by-step user's guide for project assessment. It also includes worksheets to help users plan and monitor different types of humanitarian assistance projects.
Developing Military Health Care Leaders: Insights from the Military, Civilian, and Government Sectors — 2011
The current wartime environment, rising health care costs, and an increased focus on joint operations have led to recommendations for Military Health System transformation. Lessons learned in the civilian and government sectors hold importance for transforming the way in which MHS identifies and develops health care officers with high leadership potential for senior executive positions.
Establishing a Research and Evaluation Capability for the Joint Medical Education and Training Campus — 2011
The goals of the joint medical education and training campus (METC) at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, are to become a high-performing organization and seek accreditation. Models and approaches adopted by institutions with similar missions — such as community colleges, corporate universities, METC's UK counterpart, and other federal agencies — illustrate the need for an office of institutional research to assist METC in attaining its organizational goals.
Programs Addressing Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury Among U.S. Military Servicemembers and Their Families — 2011
This comprehensive catalog of programs currently sponsored or funded by the Department of Defense to address psychological health and traumatic brain injury provides overviews and detailed descriptions of 211 programs. It also provides recommendations for clarifying the role of programs, reducing implementation barriers, and maximizing their effectiveness.
Promoting Psychological Resilience in the U.S. Military — 2011
As U.S. service members deploy for extended periods on a repeated basis, their ability to cope with the stress of deployment may be challenged. Many programs are available to encourage and support psychological resilience among service members and families. However, little is known about these programs' effectiveness. This report reviews resilience literature and programs to identify evidence-informed factors for promoting resilience.
Views from the Homefront: The Experiences of Youth and Spouses from Military Families — 2011
Examines the behavioral and emotional well-being of a select sample of youth and their nondeployed caregivers in military families who applied to a free camp program for children of military personnel and assesses how they are coping with parental deployment, with attention to their emotional, social, and academic functioning and the factors that may be associated with greater difficulties.
The War Within: Preventing Suicide in the U.S. Military — 2011
The increase in suicides among military personnel has raised concern. This book reviews the current evidence on suicide epidemiology in the military, identifies state-of-the-art suicide-prevention programs, describes and catalogs suicide-prevention activities in the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and across each service, and recommends ways to ensure that the activities in DoD and across each service reflect state-of-the-art prevention science.
2010
Achieving Strong Teamwork Practices in Hospital Labor and Delivery Units — 2010
To learn how hospital labor and delivery units can achieve effective and sustainable teamwork practices and how much such practices affect staff experiences and patient outcomes, RAND researchers studied five units as they implemented improvements in their teamwork practices over a one-year period. They identified some key factors required by any given strategy for teamwork improvement but no standard template for implementation.
Bridging the Gap: Developing a Tool to Support Local Civilian and Military Disaster Preparedness — 2010
This report describes the current policy context for domestic all-hazards risk-informed capabilities-based planning by local military and civilian authorities and results from interviews with such planners at five selected sites. Together, these form the basis for a planning support tool, for which the framework is described in this report.
Harnessing Full Value from the DoD Serum Repository and the Defense Medical Surveillance System — 2010
The Army manages the Department of Defense Serum Repository (DoDSR) of over 43 million serum samples and the associated Defense Medical Surveillance System (DMSS) database, whose primary use is for military health surveillance. RAND Arroyo Center examined the current capabilities of these resources to identify gaps and suggest strategies to improve their ability to meet current and future military health needs.
New Equipping Strategies for Combat Support Hospitals — 2010
Combat Support Hospitals, when not deployed, keep a partial set of equipment at home station with the remainder in long-term storage, a strategy that has created maintenance and obsolescence challenges. This briefing describes a new strategy for configuring home station equipment sets and proposes that deploying CSHs eliminate much of the unit-owned equipment currently in long-term storage, actions that will sharply reduce total equipment costs.
2009
Qualifying Military Health Care Officers as "Joint": Weighing the Pros and Cons — 2009
This research, part of a larger project examining the preparation and support of leaders in the medical field, evaluates the need for and feasibility of qualifying health care officers as “joint” officers. An extensive policy review and assessment of data from the 2005 Joint Officer Management survey suggest that such officers are indeed serving in billets that need and provide joint duty experience for which they should receive credit.
2008
Invisible Wounds of War: Psychological and Cognitive Injuries, Their Consequences, and Services to Assist Recovery — 2008
A comprehensive study of the post-deployment health-related needs associated with post-traumatic stress disorder, major depression, and traumatic brain injury among servicemembers returning from Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom, the health care system in place to meet those needs, gaps in the care system, and the costs associated with these conditions and with providing quality health care to all those in need.
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