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To inform improvements to the quality of care delivered by the military health system for posttraumatic stress disorder and major depressive disorder, researchers developed a framework and identified, developed, and described a candidate set of measures for monitoring, assessing, and improving the quality of care. This document describes their research approach and the measure sets that they identified.

Understanding the current quality of care for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression delivered to service members is an important step toward improving care across the Military Health System (MHS). T.his report describes the characteristics of active-component service members who received care for PTSD or depression through the MHS and assesses the quality of care received using quality measures derived from administrative data

Asbestos litigation is the longest-running mass tort litigation in U.S. history. Through 2002, approximately 730,000 individuals have brought claims against some 8,400 business entities, and defendants and insurers have spent a total of $70 billion on litigation. Building on previous RAND briefings, the authors report on what happened to those who have claimed injury from asbestos, what happened to the defendants in those cases, and how lawyers and judges have managed the cases.

The authors describe current Department of Defense safety and occupational health programs and health information systems, as well as employee health programs outside of DoD to provide a foundation for considering a more integrated Department of Defense employee health program.

This monograph serves as a technical source for National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) incident commander guidelines for emergency response immediately following large structural collapse events. It gives guidelines for personal protective equipment (PPE), focusing on required modifications to responders' typical PPE ensembles because of the duration of response and the need to prevent exposures to likely hazards from pathogens, airborne dusts, and gaseous hazardous materials.

The authors found that for the average adult beneficiary, costs to the government were 9 percent higher with CRI. Compared to the non-CRI program, costs were 57 percent higher for Prime enrollees, whereas they were the same for non-enrollees. Prime enrollees' use of outpatient care accounted for almost all of the utilization increase in CRI. Active-duty spouses who enrolled did not change their military treatment facility (MTF) use, but they were more likely to augment their (MTF) care with civilian care. Retired enrollees were more likely to use both MTF care and civilian care. CHAMPUS inpatient utilization was lower in CRI, as is often the case in managed-care programs, whereas use of MTF inpatient services did not change significantly. These findings suggest that CRI was able to increase access, especially to civilian care, with an accompanying increase in costs. The evidence points to high utilization among Prime enrollees, especially for retired beneficiaries.

"Among the possible effects of stratospheric ozone depletion, perhaps the most important consequences are the health implications for human beings. Because a reduction in stratospheric ozone would increase the amount of ultraviolet radiation reaching the earth's surface, human diseases that might be influenced by increased exposure to ultraviolet radiation (UV) are important to consider. In this Note, the authors discuss the characteristics of several types of skin cancer and other diseases believed to be related to sunlight. Their primary goal is to educate the reader regarding the natural history and consequences of UV-related diseases, by translating into layman's language information available in the scientific literature. The information in this document lays the groundwork for further research on the economic costs of these diseases in estimating the impact of stratospheric ozone depletion."--Rand abstracts.

This monograph serves as a technical source for National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) incident commander guidelines for emergency response immediately following large structural collapse events. It gives guidelines for personal protective equipment (PPE), focusing on required modifications to responders' typical PPE ensembles because of the duration of response and the need to prevent exposures to likely hazards from pathogens, airborne dusts, and gaseous hazardous materials.