Enhancing Military-Civilian Medical Synergies: The Role of Army Medical Practice in Civilian Facilities.

Army medical professionals must maintain the high level of proficiency required to fulfill the Army's medical missions of supporting military operations and providing beneficiary care. Because beneficiary care demands in a U.S. medical treatment facility (MTF) do not mirror those in a combat setting and sometimes can exceed the MTF's capacity, some MTFs enter into agreements with local civilian facilities to meet shortfalls in beneficiary care or training. The study's objective was to assess Army medical practice in U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and non--Veterans Affairs civilian facilities and suggest opportunities for improving military--civilian synergies.

Bridging the Gap: Developing a Tool to Support Local Civilian and Military Disaster Preparedness.

U.S. policymakers have stepped up systematic disaster preparedness efforts sharply since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, including the creation of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and a plethora of federal initiatives. Against a backdrop of natural disasters that occur each year in the United States and heightened concern about pandemic influenza, there is an emerging national consensus that the best path is an all-hazards approach to disaster preparedness planning and that effective local planning is critical. Military installations and their civilian counterparts-local government and local health-care providers, especially the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs-can strengthen local-level disaster preparedness planning. This is an interim report for the first phase of a larger study aiming to develop a planning support tool for local military and civilian planners. It describes current policies and programs-especially those with nationwide application-for domestic emergency preparedness, risk analysis, and capabilities-based planning. It also describes results from interviews with local military and civilian planners at five selected sites to help understand how local preparedness planning currently operates and identify the needs of local planners. Collectively, these form the basis for a proposed tool, for which the framework is described in this article. The next phase of the study will include development and field testing of a proof-of-concept prototype of the tool.