Page 132 - Journal of Special Operations Medicine - Summer 2016

component Service medical departments. Among these 3. Monitor patient outcomes, assess clinical effects, and
are reliance on Service medical structure not optimized adapt operations
to support SOF operations, extreme distances, and aus- 4. Joint Force development framework for health
tere environments; application of the “golden hour” services
standard; the need for full mission profile medical sim- 5. Medical mitigation of the environment
ulation; inability to perform real-time environmental 6. Joint credentialing and privileging
analysis; and the need for embedded health service sup- 7. Medical treatment facilities
port. As a joint command, USSOCOM nearly always 8. Patient evacuation
benefits from joint doctrine. Just imagine if you are a 9. Patient management
logistician assigned to USSOCOM. You would need to 10. Joint medical leader development
know and learn the following acronyms: JMAR, APS, 11. Medical intelligence
JDF, JSLIST, which stand for Joint Medical Asset Re- 12. Joint and Service medical education and training
pository (JMAR), Army Prepositioned Stocks (APS), the 13. Joint medical research and development
Joint Deployment Formulary (JDF) (pharmaceuticals), 14. Medical logistics
and Joint Service Lightweight Integrated Suit Technol- 15. Health Services contracts and resource programming
ogy (JSLIST) or (“MOPP [mission-oriented protective 16. Global Health Services Network
posture] gear” or protective suits). Additionally, medical
logistics (MEDLOG) managers support the Army’s area To engage in the change process outlined in JCHS, it will
support medical companies (ASMCs), the Navy’s Expe- be necessary to engage the Service medical departments.
ditionary Medical Facility Portsmouth (EMFP), the Air Right now, there are several ongoing CBAs within each
Force’s preventive medicine teams (PMTAFs), and the of the Service medical departments and the Defense
Marine Corps’ Force Service Support Groups (FSSGs) Health Agency, which will lead to needed change. The
to places like the Kuwait Theater of Operations (KTO). Joint Surgeon’s staff is doing a great job of tracking all
Those are several mouthfuls of acronyms and just one of these, if you are interested in providing input and
example of the difficulty of operating in a joint environ- need to find a point of contact. Why would you or, per-
ment. One of the things that we hope will help is the haps more importantly, why should you be interested in
Joint Concept for Health Services (JCHS) signed on 31 this? Well, your opinion matters. While you might not
August 2015. The purpose of the JCHS is explained well be directly involved in any CBA and it might not be pos-
in the following excerpt: sible or prudent for you to be involved in any CBAs, you
are probably more closely linked to this process than
Shortly after the Civil War, many of these ad- you think. I would say that there are only maybe two
vances were lost. Institutional memory lapses or three degrees of separation between you and some-
combined with a downsizing of the force caused one else who might be involved in this process. If you
the U.S. to relearn these lessons at great human contact me directly, that is definitely the case. Feel free
expense in future conflicts. The lessons of mili- to do so.
tary medicine are on display in the operations
in Iraq and Afghanistan. The medical commu- In closing, I will confess that I have probably butch-
nity’s performance in Iraq and Afghanistan has ered my description of the SPP and JCIDS processes.
provided valuable insights on the types of chal- For more and certainly better information, please visit
lenges and medical capabilities required to sup- Defense Acquisitions University at http://www.dau.mil/
port future joint operations. The Joint Concept default.aspx.
for Health Services seeks to institutionalize the
many advances in medical operations achieved
through collaboration in the war zone. Addi-
tionally, it will codify an approach to capture SGM Bowling serves as the Senior Enlisted Medical Advi-
changing medical capabilities in response to the sor for US Special Operations Command. He has served for
evolving requirements of the Joint Force. 26 years and been assigned to USASOC and the 7th Special
Forces Group. E-mail: f.bowling@socom.mil.
The JCHS outlines the 16 required capabilities that re-
quire further force development:

1. Joint medical planning The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect
2. Joint Theater directed coordination, synchronization, the official policy or position of the US Special Operations
and medical situational awareness Command, Department of Defense, or the US Government.

118 Journal of Special Operations Medicine Volume 16, Edition 2/Summer 2016