Research on Air Force Health and Health Care

Published May 11, 2022

The physical and mental health of U.S. service members is critical to their readiness to fight and ability to win. This document highlights recent RAND Corporation research on health and health care that exemplifies RAND's capabilities to help the Department of the Air Force (DAF) understand, support, and improve the health of its airmen and guardians.

RAND research on health and health care has addressed several topic areas that may be applicable to similar DAF efforts, including tracking health care access, health care quality, and wellness; modeling health system change; evaluating health and improving health programs; supporting the health care workforce; and exploring policy options and providing recommendations.

RAND staff include more than 600 doctoral-level researchers with expertise in a variety of topics and methods. RAND houses three federally funded research and development centers (FFRDCs) that conduct national defense-related research: the Arroyo Center, which conducts research and analysis for the Army; Project AIR FORCE (PAF), which conducts research and analysis for the Air Force; and the National Defense Research Institute, which conducts research and analysis for all other national security sponsors. These FFRDCs maintain a core set of researchers with specific expertise and knowledge of their respective armed services to help ensure that our research approach fits the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) context.

In addition, RAND draws on the expertise of researchers in its Health Care division and its other research divisions to provide a unique multidisciplinary approach to defense-related research. RAND researchers use a variety of methods to carry out military health and health care projects, including descriptive analysis of data from administrative databases, medical records, and surveys; survey design, administration, and analysis; simulation approaches to model the potential effect of policy changes; statistical, econometric, and mixed method approaches to evaluate programs; interviews and focus groups; and literature reviews and document analysis.

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RAND Style Manual
Research on Air Force Health and Health Care, RAND Corporation, CP-A1885-4, 2022. As of September 18, 2024: https://www.rand.org/pubs/corporate_pubs/CPA1885-4.html
Chicago Manual of Style
Research on Air Force Health and Health Care. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2022. https://www.rand.org/pubs/corporate_pubs/CPA1885-4.html.
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