DOD Could Improve Pandemic Flu Preparedness, Audit Finds

An influenza pandemic could impair the military’s readiness, jeopardize ongoing military operations abroad, and threaten the day-to-day functioning of the Department of Defense (DOD) due to a large percentage of sick or absent personnel, according to a recent federal report.

Each of DOD’s nine combatant commands (COCOMs) has established or intends to establish a working group to prepare for an influenza pandemic, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) finds in a recent report. GAO is the nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress.

Additionally, eight of the nine COCOMs have developed or are developing a pandemic influenza plan. Half of the COCOMs have conducted exercises to test their pandemic influenza plans and several are taking steps to address lessons learned. Five of the nine COCOMs have started to use various media, training programs, and outreach events to inform their personnel about pandemic influenza. Each of the geographic COCOMs has worked or plans to work with nations in its area of responsibility to raise awareness about and assess capabilities for responding to avian and pandemic influenza, according to the GAO study.

GAO recommends that DOD take steps to clarify the COCOMs’ roles and responsibilities for pandemic influenza-related efforts, identify the sources and types of resources needed for the COCOMs to accomplish these efforts, and develop options to mitigate the effects of factors that are outside of their control. DOD concurred with each of these recommendations, GAO says.

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Capella Training Helps Those Who Help The Troops

In combat overseas, U.S. troops rely on having all the right gear to do their jobs.

It is the Department of Defense Acquisition, Technology and Logistics (AT&L) workforce who make sure that happens, and now the AT&L community can rely on capella university to keep on the know-how they need to do their jobs to the fullest.

Capella has an arrangement with the Defense Acquisition University (DAU) to accept credit for DAU courses. The DAU offers courses in the areas of: auditing; business, cost estimating and financial management; contracting; facilities engineering; industrial/contract property management; information technology; life cycle logistics; and more.

An accredited online university, Capella offers graduate and undergraduate programs in business, information technology and many other areas. Capella will waive the application fee for any DAU student who is interested in attending Capella, which serves more than 19,000 students in all 50 states and 56 nations.

“Capella is proud to be a DAU partner. DAU has, over the last few years, earned critical acclaim as a pre-eminent teaching organization,” says Valerie Perkins, dean of the Capella School of Undergraduate Studies. “Capella is looking forward to building this relationship for the benefit of current and future DoD AT&L workforce learners.”

This was a sponsored post.

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Listeners Enjoy Capella Podcasts

Visitors who come to the capella university website seem to be responding positively to the university's series of online podcasts, judging by comments left on the site.

Capella, a leading online university serving more than 19,000 students from all 50 states and 56 countries, offers the roughly 15-minute podcasts to introduce listeners to Capella's faculty and students so you can get a better sense of how Capella's courses work and how students fit their learning into their busy lives.

One recent podcast featured Capella PhD student Carla Chladek about her work as program manager for the Joint Staff Training Program at the Pentagon.

Listeners who posted comments after listening found the podcast enjoyable and helpful.

For instance, Chance Brown says, "Fantastic! Carla Chladek gives an AMAZING interview! The moderator is great as well. For someone considering Capella this is an excellent Podcast. Ms. Chladek provides a 'real world' perspective on how to get the most out of Capella.
The questions were great and the answers were better! If you’re seriously considering Capella, this is the Podcast to listen to."

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Pentagon Challenge Aimed At Self-Driving Cars

The Pentagon's research arm, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), is working to develop vehicles that drive themselves autonomously. Watch this report to see what engineers are working on to make this a reality today.

The Urban Challenge will be held in November. To learn more about the race and the technology, log on to: www.tartanracing.org

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Poor Contracting Hindering Iraq Reconstruction

The Department of Defense (DOD) effort to reconstruct Iraq following the U.S. invasion is being hampered by poor contracting with companies and inadequate security, a government watchdog agency says.

DOD has relied extensively on private contractors to undertake major reconstruction projects and provide support to its deployed forces in Iraq, but these efforts have not always achieved desired outcomes, according to a new report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). GAO is the nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress.

Further, the Iraqi government must be able to reduce violence, sustain reconstruction progress, improve basic services, and make a positive difference in the daily lives of the Iraqi people, GAO says.

"The challenges faced by DOD on its reconstruction and support contracts often reflect systemic and long-standing shortcomings in DOD’s capacity to manage contractor efforts. Such shortcomings result from poorly defined or changing requirements, the use of poor business arrangements, the absence of senior leadership and guidance, and an insufficient number of trained contracting, acquisition and other personnel to manage, assess and oversee contractor performance, the GAO says in a new report. "In turn, these shortcomings manifest themselves in higher costs to taxpayers, schedule delays, unmet objectives, and other undesirable outcomes."


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U.S. Troops, Vets Not Getting Care They Need, Playboy Says

American troops fighting in Iraq and Iraq war veterans are not receiving the mental health care they deserve, specifically when it comes to the diagnosis and treatment of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), according to an investigative report for Playboy magazine.

Journalist Mark Boal spoke with numerous mental health experts, government sources and former military personnel who paint adisturbing picture about the government's handling of PTSD, according to Playboy.

Boal found that the Department of Defense (DOD) diagnoses about 2,000 cases of PTSD a year. Yet according to a landmark study conducted by Army researchers and published in The New England Journal of Medicine, PTSD rates for soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are running between 10 and 15 percent. That means one would expect to see the military diagnosing 13,000 to 20,000 cases of PTSD, Playboy says.

Former government officials agree there is a problem, according to Playboy.

"PTSD is being underdiagnosed on a fairly wholesale level," Playboy quotes Dr. Robert Roswell, a former undersecretary at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, as saying.

Sources in the Pentagon and former officials of the VA, doctors working for the VA and DOD are being pressured to limit diagnoses of PTSD in order to save the military money and manpower, reports Boal.

Budget pressures may be the motivation to discourage diagnoses of PTSD, according to the Playboy article, which reports that when the DOD submitted a war budget to Congress, the line item for mental health casualties was simply left blank.

"DOD never prepared for a long war; it never prepared for anoccupation," says one senior congressional staffer, according to Playboy. "Now we're seeing the third thing it didn't anticipate: what to do with the soldiers when they come home. Now they really don't have the money."

Boal discovered politics may also be a factor, Playboy says.

"The soldier has tremendous symbolic power in American politics. Healthy, happy soldiers bespeak a just war. Like the amputees and flag-draped coffins the administration hides from public view, such soldiers are antithetical to the hawkish goal of mitigating the costs of the conflict," writes Boal."The critical difference is that mental illness isn't always obvious and is therefore easier to sweep under the rug."

As one congressional staffer puts in the Playboy story, "It's much easier to deny the reality of mental illness than it is to deny the spinal cord injury of some guy sitting in a wheelchair."

When questioned for the piece, Pentagon and VA officials vigorously denied there is a policy to underdiagnose PTSD, Playboy says.

"That would be immoral and unethical," Playboy quotes Dr. Michael Kilpatrick, the assistant secretary of defense for troop readiness as saying.

Officials attribute the low rates of diagnosis to a reluctance on the part of military doctors to "stigmatize the person or bring harm to their careers" by labeling them with PTSD according to Lieutenant Colonel Dr. Charles Engel, the director of the deployment health clinic center at Walter Reed Medical Center. "It's out of respect for the patient that they don't make the diagnosis."

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