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HEALTH STUDY USES DATA FROM WAR ON TERRORISM --
"We're learning things that we really haven't
been
able to investigate in the past."
Story here...
http://www.af.mil/
news/story.asp?id=123055010
Story below:
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Health study uses data from war on terrorism
by Gerry J. Gilmore
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON (AFPN) -- When a landmark Defense Department-sponsored health
study was launched six years ago, one of its goals was to evaluate the
impact of future deployments on long-term health. The investigators did
not know how timely the project would be.
Today, the Millennium Cohort Study has enrolled tens of thousands of
participants who have deployed in support of the war on terrorism, said
Navy Cmdr. (Dr.) Margaret Ryan, the study's principal investigator and
director of the Defense Department Center for Deployment Health
Research, part of the Naval Health Research Center, in San Diego.
The study was designed in the late 1990s "in
the wake of the first Gulf War to answer some of the most difficult
questions that couldn't really be answered retrospectively after that
conflict," Commander Ryan said.
The joint-service study was established to evaluate the health risks of
military deployments, occupational exposures and general military
service, Commander Ryan explained, noting that about 108,000
servicemembers have signed up to take part since program enrollment
began in July 2001.
Participants' health is evaluated over a 21-year period, Commander Ryan
said, noting the size of the cohort -- the group participating in the
study - likely will total more than 147,000 people.
"About 40 percent of our cohort has deployed to one of the more recent
operations, either in Iraq or Afghanistan or surrounding regions, in
support of the global war on terrorism," she said.
Involvement in the study is voluntary and participants are selected
randomly, Commander Ryan said. All information is secure and
safeguarded, she added.
Participants report their health status every three years and can fill
out either paper or online surveys, Commander Ryan said.
"We do strongly encourage people to use the online option," she said.
"It's a very secure way to transmit information."
Dr. Tyler C. Smith will replace Commander Ryan as the study's principal
investigator later this year, as the Navy physician is slated to take a
new duty assignment at Camp Pendleton, Calif.
The study is providing valuable data that will help military
epidemiologists understand possible cause-and-effect relationships
between combat-zone deployments and problems such as post-traumatic
stress disorder, Doctor Smith said.
"We have the ability to look at a large group of individuals who were
deployed and not deployed," he said. "And we can see what factors
predict new-onset PTSD, and how PTSD evolves over time. That's what
we've been focusing on."
Evaluating the incidence of PTSD among servicemembers wasn't possible
until recently, "simply because we didn't have a cohort in place like
this that's large and population-based," Doctor Smith explained.
"So we're learning things that we really haven't been able to
investigate in the past," he said.
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Larry Scott --
