Defense Health Care: DOD Should Assess Its Needs for Managing Potential Brain Health Effects from Weapons Blast Exposures

Filed 1w ago · Via GAO · The Buffoon Desk

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Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Agnieszka Kwiecień, Nova · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

A GAO report finds the Defense Department began requiring cognitive baseline assessments and blast exposure tracking in 2024 amid growing evidence that firing certain weapons exposes troops to brain-injury-causing blast overpressure. High-risk active duty members were required to complete assessments in fiscal 2025, and new recruits get one during initial training, but DOD officials admit they never fully evaluated whether they had the resources — including dedicated staff — to actually run the program.

DOD is piloting a new assessment tool for a year starting summer 2026 and says it's working on assessing industrial hygiene resources for exposure tracking, but has no documented plan to evaluate either effort. GAO recommended DOD conduct a comprehensive resource assessment; DOD agreed and says it will act on it.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

Standing up a brain-injury monitoring program without checking whether you have the staff to run it is the kind of urgency that looks good in a press release and less good in an audit. Agreeing with the recommendation costs nothing; actually funding the positions is the part that will tell.

Source: Read the original at GAO → Scored: The Builder · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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