Risk reduction program helps assess readiness

By Col. Paul Hossenlopp, Fort Sill Garrison commanderJune 28, 2012

Did you know, the risk reduction program is a commander's program designed to identify high-risk Soldier behavior and to assess Soldier readiness at battalion or brigade level?

Incident numbers from various agencies are reported to the risk reduction office on a monthly basis for the following: accidents, alcohol offenses, chapter eliminations, child abuse, courts martial, drug offenses, financial problems, positive urinalyses, sexually transmitted infections, spouse abuse, self-harm or suicide attempts, deaths, AWOL, traffic violations, crimes against people, crimes against property, number of urinalysis samples shipped, housing warning letters, eviction notices and disciplinary actions.

This information is then entered into a Department of the Army system to develop command reports, track trends and to develop mitigation or intervention strategies.

The data is then broken down by battalion or brigade and presented to commanders on a quarterly basis, making it easy to identify problem areas within their units.

The visual shot group report allows commanders to see where their units challenges are at a quick glance.

Then, prevention options developed in a collaboration effort by the installation prevention team, co-chaired by the risk reduction coordinators, are presented and discussed with commanders.

Another useful tool the risk reduction program provides commanders is the unit risk inventory survey, or URI. These surveys were developed by the Army and are administered to active-duty Soldiers by risk reduction professionals. The URI is an anonymous questionnaire designed to screen for high-risk behaviors and practices that compromise unit readiness. The results are analyzed by battalion or brigade, not on an individual basis. The survey takes less than 30 minutes to complete.

Once the surveys have been administered to a unit, they are sent to Army Center for Substance Abuse programs for processing. The results are usually received by the risk reduction office within one to two weeks after administration. Upon receipt, a briefing with the unit commander will be scheduled to review the results. At this meeting the unit's high-risk areas of concern are discussed, and a plan for prevention and intervention efforts will be developed.

As well as conducting URIs, the risk reduction program also conducts re-integration unit risk inventory surveys, or R-URIs. They are given to Soldiers returning from deployment 90-180 days after their return. R-URI results provide valuable information to commanders about significant or critical responses that may compromise unit readiness among redeployed Soldiers.

All-in-all, the risk reduction program allows commanders to look at the whole Soldier identifying trends of events or actions that we know about that's collected on the shot group, and then identify what is not known by using Soldier self-reporting through the URI and R-URI surveys; thus providing a complete picture of the mission readiness of the Soldier population.