The purpose of deployment health surveillance is to ensure a fit and healthy force and to prevent illness, disease, adverse stress responses, and injuries from degrading mission effectiveness. As defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, health surveillance is the ongoing, systematic collection, analysis, and interpretation of health data essential to planning, implementing, and evaluating public health practice. Medical surveillance of all service members before, during, and after military deployments, is mandated by Public Law 105-85, Section 765. The Department of Defense has established several memorandums and directives to provide procedures for conducting deployment health surveillance. These include:
As prescribed by the Under Secretary of Defense (P&R) Memo on Enhanced Post-Deployment Health Assessments, the Joint Staff memorandum on Deployment Health Surveillance and Readiness, and by the DoD Health Affairs memorandum on Pre- and Post-Deployment Health Assessments, both pre- and post-deployment health surveys are required in order to assess a servicemember's state of health before and after deployment. This assists military health care providers in identifying health concerns and providing medical care. The Pre-Deployment Health Assessment should be administered at the home station or at the mobilization processing station within 30 days prior to deployment. The Post-Deployment Health Assessment should be administered in theater, within 5 days of redeployment. A copy of the health assessments are to be placed in the servicemember’s permanent medical record. Additionally, within 30 days of completion, the original assessments must be mailed to the following:
For further information on deployment health surveillance, you may wish to visit the following sites: Army Medical Surveillance Activity. AMSA is the central epidemiological resource for the Army, providing regularly scheduled and customer-requested analyses and reports to policy makers, medical planners, and researchers. Composite Health Care System II. CHCS II is a medical and dental clinical information system that will generate and maintain a comprehensive, life-long, computer-based patient record for each Military Health System beneficiary. Deployment Medication Information Sheets. The purpose of these sheets is to provide the soldiers and concerned family members with information on vaccines and other preventive medications they will receive in preparation for movement and/or during their deployment. Deployment Environmental Surveillance Program. The mission of this Program is to develop a system capable of providing commanders and other decision makers pertinent information needed to detect, assess, and counter environmental and occupational health threats. The program is part of a Comprehensive Military Medical Surveillance Program required by the DOD Directive 6490.2. DoD Post-Deployment Health Web. The objective of this site is to support clinicians who are charged with following the post-deployment evaluation and management of clinical practice guidelines with a Web-based information repository helps clinicians practicing in a broad array of highly unique military and civilian practice settings, and keeps them abreast of new health knowledge pertaining to any and all United States Armed Forces deployments. US Navy Deployment Medical Surveillance Homepage. The Naval Environmental Health Center is the lead agency in charge of Deployment Medical Surveillance for the Navy. US Air Force Office of Prevention and Health Services Assessment. The mission of OPHSA is to enhance the readiness of a fit fighting force through effective disease/injury prevention and health promotion. This office helps operational commanders and managers of health programs make sound decisions based on facts. OPHSA measures the impact of specialized programs on the airman, squadron, mission, and Air Force community, by focusing preventive medicine programs on Air Force-specific issues. |
