What's the deal with deployment health assessments?

By Ben Clark, Senior Consultant, Deployment Health Assessment ProgramOctober 28, 2015

The Deployment Health Assessment Program (DHAP) is a commanders' program and a critical tool in support of the Army Ready and Resilient (R2) Campaign that brings the medical care system directly to Soldiers and Army Civilians.

DHAP is vital for promoting Soldier well-being and enhancing unit readiness which minimizes the impact of deployment related health issues.

The DHAP serves as a gateway to care. The goal is to connect Soldiers and Army Civilians with the right care at the right time. The Deployment Health Assessments (DHA) are taken at three separate points in time: before deployment, upon redeployment, and 90-180 days after deployment.

DHAP is designed to identify emerging deployment related physical and behavioral health conditions such as: Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), depression, suicidal ideations, substance abuse, environmen-tal exposures and combat-related injuries.

DHAP: Past and Present

In 2008-09 the Post Deployment Health Reassessment (PDHRA) was the priority effort to address deployment health due to the importance of identifying/documenting deploy-ment related injuries, illnesses, or environmental risk exposures vs. conditions that may have exist-ed prior to deployment and might have already been identified via other medical surveillance tools like Periodic Health Assessments (PHA), Soldier Readiness Processing (SRP), and so forth.

The DoD sought to ensure a medically ready force by requiring the military components to implement a comprehensive deployment health program that effectively anticipates, recognizes, evaluates, controls, and mitigates health threats encountered during deployments. This led to the creation of the Deployment Health Assessment Program.

In accordance with "DoD Instruction 6490.03, Deployment Health, 30 September 2011", DHAs are required for all deployments outside the continental United States (OCONUS) greater than 30 days to any location not supported by a fixed U.S. Military Treatment Facility (MTF).

These deployments might include training exercises, humanitarian assistance missions, operational deployments, etc. Com-manders exercising operational control deter-mine whether deployment health assessments are also required for other CONUS or OCONUS deployments of any duration to locations where specific environmental or health risks exist.

DHAP: The Way Ahead

In the near term, DHAP enhancements will better synchronize these assessments with other medical surveillance tools, eliminate redundancies, and improve the accuracy of compliance reporting. Reporting will be expand-ed to include referral tracking and identification of medical outcomes to measure the effective-ness of the program in addressing Soldier and Army Civilian deployment related health issues.

Related Links:

Ready and Resilient

Deployment Health Assessments