Military medicine
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Current policies governing the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs physical examination programs are out of step with current evidence-based medical practice. Replacing periodic and other routine physical examination types with annual preventive health assessments would afford our service members additional health benefit at reduced cost. ⋯ A clear, coherent, and coordinated strategy to improve the relevance and utility of our physical examination programs is long overdue. This article discusses existing physical examination programs and proposes a model for a new integrative physical examination program based on need, science, and common sense.
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Military and civilian humanitarian interventions in severely affected Indonesian province of Aceh are described following the tsunami of December 26. Specific events and activities illustrate the comparative roles of these types of agencies and how collaboration should recognize the abilities and limitations of each.
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To determine whether having a partner deployed during wartime increased the stress levels in pregnant women and altered the attitudes toward pregnancy or changed birth outcomes. ⋯ Pregnant women with deployed partners gave birth to larger babies. They also more frequently report a change in eating habits and that media coverage impacted their stress level.
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Objectives of this secondary analysis were to describe the prevalence of vaginal douching among 1,432 women on active duty in the military and to examine demographic and behavioral factors associated with douching. More than one-half (54.5%) of the respondents reported douching at least once in their lifetimes; 63.5% of those douched during the previous year, and 45.8% of those douched in > or = 6 of the past 12 months. ⋯ These women may benefit from specific intensive information on normal vaginal self-cleansing mechanisms and the health hazards of douching. Military efforts to diminish this self-care behavior and to enhance providers' knowledge about the scope of the problem may improve women's health and military readiness by decreasing the incidence of negative consequences of douching.