Hey, funding for a program that actually helps wounded warriors is running out!

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By
Kenneth E. Blackman

Best
Defense guest commenter

The Defense Department,
the veterans administration, and the Obama administration are missing an enormous
opportunity to help wounded warriors, indeed every serviceman and woman
returning from battle overseas.  

There's a hugely
successful program in North Carolina called the Citizen Soldier Support Program
(CSSP) that maps data about the deployments of service members down to the
local level, trains civilian health professionals to identify and treat those
in their communities in need, and then connects the military, veterans, and
their families with knowledgeable providers to deal with post-traumatic stress
disorder (PTSD), traumatic brain injury (TBI), and other behavioral problems
that result from combat and repeated rotations overseas.

Here's the rub: Federal
funding has run out and the program is about to go out of business, despite
memos of support from former Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen, two
letters from North Carolina Senator Kay Hagan, another from four influential
Tar Heel Congressmen (David Price, Mike McIntyre, Walter Jones, and Larry
Kissell), and applause from virtually all who have looked at this effort.

The Citizen Soldier
Support Program began with $9.8 million dollars from Congress in 2005-2007. The University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill serves as host (who says academe doesn't care
about the military?). The focus is
on military members and their families, especially in the reserves and
National Guard, and especially in rural, sparsely populated, and other
under-served areas -- in other words, those areas where the military and the
veterans' administration aren't reaching the people who need help.

Check it out at www.citizensoldiersupport.org. It's unique -- no
other program like it in the country. It starts by mapping the service
populations by home zip code. For example, there are currently reservists
and National Guardsmen and women in all but 12 U.S. counties (out of 3141
nationally). There are reserve/Guard vets of the Iraq, Afghanistan, and
other deployments in all but 27 counties. So the first contribution is locating
all those eligible, and their dependents. Take a look.

Then the program trains
behavioral (and other) health providers onsite and online -- to date, over 20,000
practicing in all 50 states. Then it tracks the distribution of those
trained and matches them against the needs identified in the mapping of
deployment data. CSSP offers nationally recognized courses on PTSD, TBI, issues
relating to women in combat, issues of importance to military families, and the
like. There's training focused on primary care physicians and
optometrists to recognize these injuries during routine examinations. All
courses are available for free and the cost of continuing education credits is
covered.

Last, the program contains
a web-based, searchable database of providers to connect them with service
members and their families who are in need. This database is modeled on the one
developed for North Carolina, where there are more than 1200 total providers in
96 of the 100 counties. The goal is three trained health providers within
30 minutes of every service and family member who needs it -- nationwide.

For
over two years, CSSP has sought re-funding from the Defense Department,
Veterans Administration, and other government agencies at the highest levels,
including speaking directly with the Secretary of Defense, the current and
former Joint Chiefs Chairmen, and the Staff of the First Lady. They have had ample opportunity to act but
have not, despite White House efforts to marshal the involvement of the
nation's leading professional medical associations. The issues facing our returned and returning
military population, veterans, and their families are not a government problem;
they are a national crisis that is only going to get worse.

The Citizen Soldier
Support Program is led by Bob Goodale, a retired CEO of the Harris Teeter
supermarket chain, and retired LTC Bill Abb, a veteran of 21 years on active
duty in the army. They have been working cooperatively with all these agencies,
including the White House Joining Forces effort, and countless others at the
local, state and national levels -- not as competitors but to complement and to
help.

What puzzles
CSSP, and its distinguished advisory board led by a retired Chief of the Army
Reserves and a retired Adjutant General of the North Carolina National Guard, is why with all this
support, after all these efforts at the highest levels of government, this
program will die. It needs immediate funding to continue and then long-term
money to realize its national potential -- in total, some $18 or 20 million over
five years.

From the start
of his first presidential campaign in 2007, Barack Obama has reached out to the
military, emphasizing the needs of our soldiers and our military families.
His bureaucrats say "they have it covered." But they
don't -- not like this, not at the community level, not training local health
providers, not focusing on the Guard and reserves and their vets. Last Friday
the president essentially admitted that by issuing an executive order full of
plans for interagency cooperation, partnering with community mental health
services, new plans for more planning, hiring more therapists, creating pilot
programs, and more -- proof positive of the crying need to expand mental health
services to the military.

Everybody
knows that Active Duty Service Members have overwhelmed the military's mental
health resources, forcing referrals to local civilian providers. Everybody knows that deployments affect far
more than those who went overseas: parents, spouses, siblings, significant others, children, and more. Everyone knows that it takes weeks or
months for far too many wounded warriors to get help and that many vets are
hours away from the nearest VA facility -- and that help often requires months of
waiting and involves terribly frustrating runarounds. Suicides among
current and former military have skyrocketed -- July just saw the worst monthly
total on record among those on active duty, and those suicides are only the tip
of the iceberg.

In that same
month of July, the Pentagon asked Congress to allow $708 million appropriated
for TRICARE, the health insurance for service members and vets, to be
reprogrammed for use elsewhere. Twenty-four members of the House Armed Services Committee asked that the
money be focused on PTSD, TBI, and related problems. What better use of the money than to find and
connect health providers to those wounded, and their families, who aren't
getting help from the VA or the military health system?

The president
and first lady will soon be in North Carolina for the Democratic
convention. His Executive Order sets in
motion all sorts of good efforts but they will take months and years to
implement. The Citizen Soldier Support Program is up and running, succeeding,
and using the private sector -- health providers in local communities all across
the country -- to identify those who need help, and getting it to them through
professionals practicing right next door. If the president wants to be consistent with everything he's doing to
support our military, and his own Executive Order, he will order the Pentagon
or the VA, or both, to continue the Citizen Soldier Support Program, and
announce it loudly to the Convention and the country. If he won't act, then Congress should. Not a single soldier or family should be left
to suffer if help can be provided.

Kenneth E. Blackman,
PhD, served four years in the Air Force Security Service and has spent a career
in the biomedical and substance abuse treatment field. He currently serves on the Board of Directors
of the Alcohol Drug Council of North Carolina and as a volunteer veteran
representative in the Jail Diversion and Trauma Recovery Program.