State of Health Equity Movement, 2011 Update Part C: Compendium of Recommendations DRA Project Report No. 11-03

State of Health Equity Movement, 2011 Update Part C: Compendium of Recommendations DRA Project Report No. 11-0

State of Health Equity Movement, 2011 Update Part B: Catalog of Activities DRA Project Report No. 11-02

State of Health Equity Movement, 2011 Update Part B: Catalog of Activities DRA Project Report No. 11-0

Military Leader Development and Autonomous Learning: Responding to the Growing Complexity of Warfare

The complexity in today’s operational military environment and the responsibility of leadership in this environment has exponentially increased over the past century. This trend will continue as global economies, political structures, and technologies continue to evolve. Learner autonomy is recognized as a paramount concern in leadership programs, including military programs. The purpose of this article is to increase awareness of the need for learner autonomy among military leaders; however, the implications may be generalizable to any organization responsible for developing leaders who operate in ambiguous and complex environments

The Social Determinants of Health and the Decline in U.S. Life Expectancy: Implications for Appalachia

For the past century, life expectancy in industrialized countries has increased, and the U.S. has shared in that progress. However, beginning in the 1980s, advances in U.S. life expectancy began to lose pace with peer countries. By 1998, U.S. life expectancy had fallen below the average for Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development nations. U.S. life expectancy peaked in 2014 and has been decreasing for three consecutive years, a trend not been seen since the influenza pandemic a century ago. Put simply, U.S. health is in decline

Deploying Mindfulness to Gain Cognitive Advantage: Considerations for Military Effectiveness and Well-being

Mindfulness involves paying attention to present moment experience without discursive commentary or emotional reactivity. Mindfulness training (MT) programs aim to promote this mental mode via introduction to specific mindfulness exercises, related in-class discussion, and ongoing engagement in mindfulness exercises. MT is being increasingly offered to high-demand, high-stress military/uniformed and civilian cohorts with a wide array of reported benefits. Herein, we begin by discussing recent theoretical models regarding MT’s mechanisms of action from a cognitive training/cognitive neuroscience perspective, which propose that MT engages and strengthens three key processes [e.g., 1]. These are: 1) attentional orienting, which is the ability to select and sustain attention on a subset of information while remaining undistracted; 2) meta-awareness, which is the ability to monitor one’s ongoing experience with an awareness of doing so; and 3) decentering, which is the ability to view one’s experience at a psychological distance so that biases, mind-sets, and interpretations are viewed as mental processes rather than accurate depictions of reality. Next, we review evidence of MT’s beneficial effects on cognitive, social, and emotional dimensions of human behavior, which are aligned with military frameworks describing the human dimension [e.g., 2]. We then discuss attitudinal impediments to broad adoption of MT in military settings, and propose counterarguments so as to facilitate its implementation. We end by arguing that MT should be considered a key cognitive training tool by which to achieve cognitive advantage in the service of improved operational readiness and effectiveness, as well as greater resilience and well-being in military/uniformed cohorts

Military Intelligence, U.S. Army Intelligence Activities, AR 381-10 (2005)

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