Silver Spring, Maryland: Service members face many types of obstacles in their daily work. Exercises can result in strained ligaments and fractured bones; combat zones can produce concussions and amputations; exposure to contaminated water sources can spread diarrheal diseases. The Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center (AFHSC) works to counter these threats with surveillance information that can help maintain and enhance the health of service members and their families. AFHSC joined the Defense Health Agency Aug. 24. 

AFHSC produces reports on evidence-based estimates of the incidence and trends of illnesses and injuries among service members. It provides near-real-time information on infectious disease outbreaks in the U.S. and abroad that might affect the armed forces. It conducts surveillance on endemic and emerging infectious diseases in more than 65 countries that are critical to national security interests and the global health security of our allies. 

“The ultimate goal for AFHSC is to make sure that its customers – Department of Defense policymakers, military commanders, public health officers, and health care providers – have the health surveillance information necessary for them to shape their preventive measures that protect our forces,” said Army Col. Michael Bell, AFHSC’s chief. “Our mission is to make sure our military leaders and interagency partners have timely and comprehensive health surveillance data in their hands to make those decisions.” 

AFHSC maintains two longstanding and vital tools for medical health surveillance – the Defense Medical Surveillance System (DMSS) and the Department of Defense Serum Repository. The DMSS contains more than two billion health care records from multiple sources and integrates them into a longitudinal surveillance database for all individuals who have served in the military since 1990. The repository contains more than 58 million specimens collected from more than 10 million active duty and reserve members. 

The DMSS databases, which contain demographic, occupational, and medical information, link to the repository specimens. “These two databases are a unique and powerful resource to support military medical surveillance, clinical care and sero-epidemiologic investigations,” Bell said. 

The center’s Global Emerging Infectious Disease Surveillance (GEIS) Operations section supports a network of six overseas research laboratories and four U.S.-based reference laboratories that conduct research on endemic and emerging infectious diseases. In 2015, GEIS distributed $43.4 million to support surveillance efforts in 65 countries, including infection control efforts in Liberia during the Ebola outbreak response. GEIS helped to fight the spread of influenza before it arrived in the U.S. by collecting sample strains from 37 different countries between 2009 and 2014. 

GEIS and the unified commands also co-host health surveillance events to train our allies on emerging and endemic disease surveillance and prevention in their countries. In 2014, GEIS co-hosted events on malaria control and prevention with Pacific Command and Africa Command because global public health among allies is critical to national security interests. 

”We are absolutely thrilled to be moving into DHA,” Bell said. “We’re excited about the opportunity to take surveillance and public health to the next level to make sure our service members are part of that medically ready force the DHA is committed to having.”