Washington,
Jul 14, 2005 -
Rep. Christopher Shays (CT-4), Chairman of the Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats, and International Relations, today announced the Subcommittee will convene an oversight hearing July 19 to assess DOD efforts to collect and analyze Occupational and Environmental Health Surveillance (OEHS) data for deployed forces.
The hearing will focus on the findings of a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report requested by the Subcommittee. Past work by GAO determined DOD efforts to determine the cause of deployment-related illnesses have been hampered by: incomplete medical surveillance, limited information on troop location, lack of data on the extent and duration of specific exposures to environmental hazards and the accuracy of recordkeeping on health status before and after deployment.
“Awareness of the occupational hazards of deployment has increased dramatically since the first Gulf War,” Shays said. “But consistently collecting exposure data and transmitting it to individual medical records and to clinicians has not yet been accomplished.”
The hearing will convene Tuesday, July 19, at 10:30 a.m. in room 2154 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, D.C.
WITNESS LIST
PANEL ONE
Mr. Brian Scott La Morte
Company Sergeant Major
B Company, 3rd Battalion, 20th Special Forces Group (Airborne)
North Carolina Army National Guard
Mr. Raymond Ramos
Retired Staff Sergeant
442nd military police
Dr. Marcia Crosse
Director, Health Care
Government Accountability Office
PANEL TWO
Dr. Michael Kilpatrick
Deputy Director of the Deployment Health Support Directorate
Department of Defense
Dr. Susan Mather
Chief Officer, Public Health & Environmental Hazards
Veterans Health Administration
Department of Veterans Affairs
Accompanied by:
Dr. Mark Brown
Director, Environmental Agents Service
