Missed Opportunities: Public Health Disaster Management in Canada

Three recent Canadian public health crises present an illustration of both the opportunities for reform and the challenges that may impede progress and public health renewal in federalist nations. While the three crises examined exposed serious flaws in emergency preparedness and fuelled demands for vital public health reform, evidence indicates that fundamental challenges have not been addressed and may have even heightened over the last decade given a move to “open federalism” and the significant fiscal impacts of ongoing austerity measures. With future pandemics inevitable, we identify the missed opportunities to optimize Canada’s emergency response capacity and procedures and examine the seemingly intractable barriers of federalism and path dependency thinking that continue to impede learning and reform and ultimately undermine effective disaster managemen

Determinants of National Guard Mental Health Service Utilization in VA versus Non‐VA Settings

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/134155/1/hesr12446.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/134155/2/hesr12446-sup-0001-AppendixSA1.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/134155/3/hesr12446_am.pd

Buddy-to-Buddy, a citizen soldier peer support program to counteract stigma, PTSD, depression, and suicide

Citizen soldiers (National Guard and Reserves) represent approximately 40% of the two million armed forces deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq. Twenty-five to forty percent of them develop PTSD, clinical depression, sleep disturbances, or suicidal thoughts. Upon returning home, many encounter additional stresses and hurdles to obtaining care: specifically, many civilian communities lack military medical/psychiatric facilities; financial, job, home, and relationship stresses have evolved or have been exacerbated during deployment; uncertainty has increased related to future deployment; there is loss of contact with military peers; and there is reluctance to recognize and acknowledge mental health needs that interfere with treatment entry and adherence. Approximately half of those needing help are not receiving it. To address this constellation of issues, a private–public partnership was formed under the auspices of the Welcome Back Veterans Initiative. In Michigan, the Army National Guard teamed with the University of Michigan and Michigan State University to develop innovative peer-to-peer programs for soldiers (Buddy-to-Buddy) and augmented programs for military families. Goals are to improve treatment entry, adherence, clinical outcomes, and to reduce suicides. This manuscript describes training approaches, preliminary results, and explores future national dissemination.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/79148/1/j.1749-6632.2010.05719.x.pd

Couples Coping Through Deployment: Findings From a Sample of National Guard Families

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/140037/1/jclp22487.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/140037/2/jclp22487_am.pd

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Review of young driver risk taking and its association with other risk taking behaviours

This report documents the investigation of the relationship between risky driving behaviours and other health risk behaviours among youth and young adults, locally and elsewhere. Literature reviews were undertaken of the development of risk taking; young driver behaviour; substance use including alcohol, smoking and illicit drugs; unsafe sex, and self-harm and suicide to identify and compare common risk factors for local youth and those elsewhere. Countermeasures that can be adopted from other risk taking areas and applied to young driver risk taking were also reviewed. A number of recommendations were provided for potential interventions to reduce risk taking on the road as well as others for additional research into the relationship between risk taking on the road and elsewhere for Western Australian youth.Road Safety Council of Western Australiahttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/94210/1/102889.pd