Community reintegration among military service members with physical and psychological injuries sustained during combat has been an emerging issue since the beginning of the Global War on Terror (GWOT) in 2001. Injured service members from the GWOT, including Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Iraqi Freedom, and Operation New Dawn, are much more likely to survive their injuries when compared to previous wars such as the Vietnam War and World War II (Holcomb, Stansbury, Champion, Wade, & Bellamy, 2006). Therefore, many more injured service members are receiving physical rehabilitation and mental health services to assist them in transitioning back into their homes and communities. Recent studies have indicated that injured service members are at risk of poor community reintegration (Resnik & Allen, 2007; Resnik, Plow, & Jette, 2009). However, these studies have neglected to account for personal and environmental factors (e.g., contextual factors) that influence community reintegration. These contextual factors have the potential to greatly affect an injured service members ability to reintegrate (Resnik et al., 2012). Therefore, the purpose of this mixed methods study was to identify and explain the influence of contextual factors on community reintegration among service members who have sustained physical and/or psychological injuries while serving in the GWOT
