Letter from the Editor

This issue of RAND Health Quarterly includes six studies on California Mental Health Services Authority (CalMHSA) programs. CalMHSA's many activities include stigma and discrimination reduction presentations for students and programs for adults, as well as the development of a silent monitoring protocol for California suicide crisis call centers to evaluate call content and quality, document staff strengths and weaknesses, and identify areas for further training.

In military health research, Breslau and Brown analyzed behavioral health care use by spouses of service members. Their findings include a negative association between residing in rural areas and behavioral health care service use, but they also found that spouses who lived more than 30 minutes from a military treatment facility were more likely to receive prescription psychiatric medications than those who lived closer. Other military health studies investigate airman and family resilience and the effectiveness of SimCoach, a computer program that encourages service members to seek help for posttraumatic stress disorder and depression.

Three studies from RAND Europe look at health research policy leadership, the effectiveness of antimicrobial educational interventions, and the work of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative in West Africa.

Andrew W. Mulcahy, Ph.D., M.P.P., Editor