Source: United States Navy (Medical)
When a Navy ship or shore command is at risk or experiences adverse safety events, leaders need clear information about vulnerabilities that exist, who is most at risk and why, and what actions can be taken to prevent future incidents. Understanding how leadership, workplace cohesion and stressors influence and affect sailors’ mental and behavioral health is crucial for developing meaningful solutions to these issues.
Civilian investigators at Naval Health Research Center developed the Rapid Response Surveillance (RRS) capability to assess these factors quickly and provide practical recommendations to Navy leaders. The multidisciplinary team is made up of researchers with expertise in psychology, public health, mixed-methods research and epidemiology, and can deploy when a command experiences an adverse event or mishap, such as suicide, or when a command is at a heightened risk for such events.
After RRS has been requested by a command and funding is secured, the team schedules a one-week visit to conduct an anonymous and voluntary command survey as well as in-depth focus groups. The team may screen for depression, suicidal ideation, anxiety and posttraumatic stress symptoms. They ask about alcohol use, sleep habits and aggressive behavior, and assess participant’s perceptions of leadership, workplace cohesion and stressors.
While it can be challenging to recruit enough Sailors to make the study worthwhile, the team provides incentives to participate, and works to establish trust with the participants.
“I think the fact that we are civilian researchers is very helpful because we don’t report to their chain of command,” said Robyn Englert, the RRS team study coordinator.
Once data collection is complete, the RRS team works quickly to analyze their findings. They take extra care to review what they have learned and develop recommendations that can be readily implemented without interfering with the command’s mission.
Findings are presented to command leadership, and infographics, handouts and summaries are distributed to relevant departments.
“All of the data we collect is for the purpose of trying to make realistic, specific and actionable recommendations that the command can implement to make the experiences of Sailors better,” said Dr. Jennifer Belding, who was principal investigator of RRS from 2023-2024.
What sorts of recommendations are made? Consider a hypothetical scenario where junior enlisted personnel face significant stress due to last-minute task assignments every Friday. Perhaps these tasks are communicated with short notice, leaving them scrambling to complete their duties by the end of the day. The RRS team may dig deeper and learn that these issues are due to chiefs receiving task information on Wednesday but then being unable to relay those assignments until Friday due to their own meeting schedules. One actionable recommendation may be to move the chiefs’ meetings earlier to Monday, thus allowing for earlier communication and providing junior enlisted members additional time to complete their tasks. This change could hypothetically reduce work-related stress and lead to positive outcomes.
“It’s little changes to leadership style, schedules or making a tweak here or there in order to ease stressors that commonly can get overlooked,” explained Englert.
The RRS capability spawned from a similar effort the team was conducting called the Challenges of Operational Environments (COPE) study. While similar in design and approach, COPE is unique from RRS in that it seeks to understand how work-related stressors impact the mental and behavioral health of sailors throughout the different phases of a command’s life cycle.
“We know that Navy commands go through different phases or life cycles. For example, a carrier might be stationed in the U.S. for a while, deploy, then change homeports, then visit the shipyard for repairs. We do not currently have data about how these changes impact sailors’ well-being,” said Belding.
By identifying which stressors are associated with harmful behaviors at specific times, the team can provide commands with crucial information, allowing leaders to anticipate common stressors, potentially preventing issues like suicidal ideation, aggressive workplace behaviors and hazardous drinking. The goal is to help commands offer targeted resources and support, promoting self-care and overall well-being among their personnel.
The COPE project stalled when COVID-19 halted travel and fieldwork; however, it gained new life when a ship experiencing adverse events requested assistance. Despite initial travel restrictions, the team eventually conducted a rapid response assessment, administering surveys and conducting focus groups. They briefed the ship’s command on their findings within six weeks, which marked the birth of the RRS capability. The swift assessment and feedback proved invaluable, and word began to spread about this unique capability.
Over the past year, RRS has supported five commands, four of which have requested the team conduct a reassessment as well. Even better, command leaders are sharing their experiences with other commands who might need support.
“The way that people are getting information about this capability is through word of mouth because of positive experiences,” said Belding. “I think that is a success story.”
The COPE study will continue to observe personnel aboard two aircraft carriers over a two- to three-year period. The data collected will be used to develop a predictive model of harmful behaviors among sailors over various phases of the ship’s life cycle. The team’s hope is that this model will prove a powerful tool in suicide prevention as well as benefit sailors’ overall readiness and performance.
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