CSRA Wounded Warrior Care Project Update

It's been an exciting 9 weeks on the job so far for me as Executive Director of the CSRA Wounded Warrior Care Project. In that time, I've had 2 trips to Washington, DC, with 3 visits to Capitol Hill, one meeting at the Pentagon, 2 meetings with Veterans Affairs staffers, and a meeting with Senator Bob Dole and another President's Commission member. Senator Dole co-chaired the President's Commission on Care for America's Returning Wounded Warriors (PCCWW) and has come up with a plan to "serve, support and simplify" the system helping our returning wounded service members. (To see the report for yourself, go to http://www.pccww.gov/ and click on the final report, or to see where Augusta's mentioned, go to the 149 page subcommittee report.)

Senator Dole thinks Augusta's resources should be used their fullest potential, and served as a wonderful sounding board for me as I continue to explore whether Augusta is uniquely qualified to play a larger role in wounded warrior care.

Some of the findings I have shared with Senator Dole and others:

* The Dole/Shalala Commission has called for recovery coordinators to be placed across the country to lead each wounded warrior through a recovery plan. Since 2005, the Medical College of Georgia School of Nursing has had a Clinical Nurse Leader program, which we are exploring as a match for the Recovery Coordinators. Graduates of the School of Nursing's CNL program are decision-makers and leaders who ensure the best outcomes for patients.

* Eisenhower Army Medical Center is a major destination for air evacuees from Iraq and Afghanistan and is home to the Army's Southeast Regional Medical Command. Augusta was listed second only to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in numbers of evacuees from Iraq and Afghanistan in the July 2007 Dole/Shalala Commission report.

* Augusta's Uptown VA Medical Center is home to the nation's only Active Duty Rehabilitation Unit located within a VA facility. It has treated nearly 500 in-patients and more than 1,000 out-patients, all of them on Active Duty. The gold standard of care given at the ADRU to Soldiers, Marines, Sailors, Airmen and Coast Guardsmen was highlighted in a U.S. Senate field hearing in August. (To see WRDW's coverage of the hearing, go to http://www.wrdw.com/csrawwcp/headlines/11081346.html)

* a disproportionate number of the returning service members come from the southeastern United States (30% of service members call Georgia, South Carolina, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee and Kentucky home).

* Of the communities with a regional medical command, Augusta is the most affordable housing market in the nation.

* We have two new employers who are bringing more than 2,000 jobs to the area, which could offer either permanent or temporary employment to the family members of wounded warriors.

* The Savannah River National Laboratory, a Department of Energy research facility, is the only lab of its type that does rapid prototyping. Within weeks, they put robotic cameras in the rubble at Ground Zero after 9/11. The have existing capabilities to be an independent determiner of the robustness and appropriateness of technologies and devices developed for amputees from Iraq and Afghanistan.

* Walton Rehabilitation Hospital (CARF-certified) has expertise with both traumatic brain injury and spinal injury rehabilitation services and has experience in setting up and running transitional living, assisted living and independent living facilities for those with traumatic brain and spinal cord injuries. The capacity at their transitional living facility can be doubled with very little capital investment.


All of these areas merit full exploration, and I hope this leads us to a consensus of the best way to better serve more of America's men and women returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.