Missouri Air Guard leads medical training event for southeast Missouri community

By: Lt. Sean Navarro
mo.ngpao@mail.mil
Published: 3/14/2017
 

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – The Missouri Air National Guard’s 131st Bomb Wing will lead Operation Healthy Delta 2017, a medical Innovative Readiness Training (IRT) exercise where around 5,000 citizens of southeast Missouri and the surrounding communities are expected to receive services at no-cost.

About 250 service members are expected to participate, including units from the Missouri Air National Guard, the New Jersey Air National Guard’s 108th Air Refueling Wing, the New York Air National Guard’s 109th Airlift Wing and the Navy Reserve, and will partner with the Delta Regional Authority.

The medical focus of Operation Healthy Delta means that Bootheel region communities will be able to receive routine health exams, routine dental services (including dental extractions) and optometry services.

“We will have two clinic sites, one in Charleston and one in Caruthersville, that will provide services,” said Maj. James Miller from the 131st Medical Group and officer-in-charge for the operation. “This gives providers a chance to conduct valuable training that is essential to their medical and operational skills in field-like conditions.”

Because of the scale of the training, service members in other military jobs will be able to participate, including finance, logistics, public affairs, security, communications, services and transportation.

“We usually train using simulated situations,” said Miller. “This operation will help us apply our training from set-up to tear-down, while providing services to real people in our community.”

The IRT program provides high quality training opportunities for active, Guard and Reserve service members while helping to meet the country’s civil needs. Missions can focus on engineering and medical specialties.

For more information on the IRT program, visit http://irt.defense.gov/.

BRAIN INJURY AWARENESS MONTH MARCH 2017

March has been designated as Brain Injury Awareness Month.  More than 3.5 million children and adults sustain an acquired brain injury (ABI) each year, but the total incidence is unknown.  An ABI is any injury to the brain that is not hereditary, congenital, degenerative, or induced by birth trauma. Typical causes of ABI include: electric shock; infectious disease; lightning strike; near drowning; oxygen deprivation (Hypoxia/Anoxia); seizure disorders; stroke; substance abuse; toxic exposure; trauma and tumor.  For information please contact the toll-free Brain Injury Information Center at 1-800-444-6443. The e-mail address is braininjuryinfo@biausa.org

The American Brain Tumor Association was the first and is the only national advocacy organization committed to funding brain tumor research and providing education and information support for all tumor types and all age groups. Assistance includes support groups and organizations offering financial aid. For information please contact 1-800-886-2282 or email  abtacares@abtaorg

The National Brain Tumor Society provides information to the nearly 700,000 people in the United States living with a primary brain tumor. Brain tumors can be deadly, significantly impact quality of life, and change everything for a patient and their loved ones. They do not discriminate, inflicting men, women, and children of all races and ethnicities. 688,096 Americans are living with a brain tumor; 550,042 tumors are benign and 138,054 tumors are malignant. For information on treatment center options please contact http://www.braintumornetwork.org/and for clinical trials, www.braintumor.org

The Boot Campaign now offers a veteran assistance program – ReBOOT –providing a comprehensive, individualized, multi-disciplined approach to increasing mental and physical well-being for America’s military veterans. Whether combating traumatic brain injury (TBI), post-traumatic stress (PTS), depression or other transitional issues, ReBOOT tackles the root cause of the struggles affecting so many servicemen and women. The program brings together world class mental and physical treatment partners thorough diagnostic evaluations, so each veteran gets specific care needed to live a fulfilling life.

ReBOOT is an innovative pipeline to “reboot” and remove all financial barriers related to treatment and conditioning for overall mental and physical health and well-being for veterans. It is a multi-discipline approach to treating veterans with TBI and other combat-related issues. Because brain injuries are so complex and different for each person, a multi-directional approach is necessary. The program brings together the best TBI facilities in the country that offer a veteran-based treatment program and strategically aligns them with the veteran’s needs. The program begins with a pre-cognitive assessment so the candidate has a baseline to build on. The candidate will visit the appropriate center for valuable treatment and training protocols for their particular issues. Additionally, the candidates will have the opportunity to visit a high performance institute to balance out their nutrition and get their bodies back into physical shape. The last stop is to conduct a post-cognitive assessment in order to measure how far the candidate has come.

Donations in support of ReBOOT go to veteran grants for everything they need to regain positive mental health, including treatment at an innovative brain treatment center, travel costs, living expenses and lost income replacement. Approximately 22 percent of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom combat wounds are brain injuries, and Boot Campaign believes financial concerns should not be the barrier between a veteran and necessary treatment. For information please contact: http://www.bootcampaign.org/reboot/

Since 1987, the National Organization for Rare Disorders/NORD has provided assistance programs to help patients obtain life-saving or life-sustaining medication they could not otherwise afford. These programs provide medication, financial assistance with insurance premiums and co-pays, diagnostic testing assistance, and travel assistance for clinical trials or consultation with disease specialists. To apply for assistance you may call 1-800-999-6673. NORD’s Patient Services Representatives are available: Monday-Thursday: 9:00 a.m.- 7:00 p.m. EST and Friday: 9:00 a.m.- 6:00 p.m. EST.