• Theresa Schulz, Tanisha Hammill, Tracy Zapata, Jose Betancourt, and Amanda Edwards-Stewart.
• DOD Defense Health Agency, Hearing Center of Excellence, San Antonio, TX 78236, USA.
• Mil Med. 2023 Nov 8; 188 (Suppl 6): 621628621-628.

IntroductionTo assist in addressing medical readiness challenges, the DOD has established various Centers of Excellence to focus efforts to protect, treat, train, and educate service members concerning risks and potential injuries. Using the hearing health domain as a pilot, this effort used DOD methods to evaluate all facets of successful health behavior change (HBC) practices within a military environment and developed a framework and pathway for HBC.MethodsThe DOD uses the Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System (JCIDS) to ensure new DOD capabilities are identified and fielded in a manner that is interoperable, resilient, and supportables. The study sponsor for the Health Behavioral Change Framework study is the Defense Health Agency Deputy Assistant Director for Research and Engineering (R&E). The main objective of this group was to ensure that final products would both meet the requirements as defined by the JCIDS process, as well as be used by the operational force in addressing HBCs that improve readiness of the joint force.ResultsThe Health Behavior Change Guidebook applies to all organizations across the DOD and military health system that may participate in or support specific tasks related to the design, conduct, and assessment of the HBC campaign. The advantage of the process is the ability to define gaps and solutions at an enterprise level. The HBC framework can be applied to a variety of health domains to include behavioral health.ConclusionsUse of the "Guidebook for Design, Conduct and Assessment of Health Behavior Change Campaign Within the DOD" and DOTMLPF-P analysis will move Defense Health Agency toward more disciplined use of the JCIDS. The HBC framework allowed the Hearing Center of Excellence to lead the hearing health community to create a capability-based assessment for hearing HBC.Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Association of Military Surgeons of the United States 2023. This work is written by (a) US Government employee(s) and is in the public domain in the US.

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