By Abigail H. Gewirtz, Stephen J. Cozza, Kenneth W. Kizer, JAMA Pediatrics, August 10, 2020
The United States has been continuously at war for nearly 2 decades, during which time some 2.7 million Americans have answered the call to arms. Such prolonged conflict is unprecedented in US history. Also unprecedented is the number of service members of the National Guard and military Reserve forces who have left their families to deploy to the battlefields of southwest Asia. As a result of these circumstances, more than 2 million military-connected children have experienced the deployment of one or both parents, with some of these children subsequently facing the challenges of their parents returning with service-connected injuries or illnesses or not returning at all. But how many among the 99% of Americans who have not served in the military understand the challenges faced by these children? How effectively are health care professionals responding to their needs? Are these military-connected children even recognized by clinicians?
Notwithstanding the overall resilience of military families, an increasing body of literature documents the detrimental effect on children whose parents have multiple and lengthy wartime deployments.1 This literature also makes clear that few clinicians inquire whether family members of the children they treat have served in the military or are aware of the challenges faced by military-connected children.
Until the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the multiple deployments associated with these conflicts, little attention was paid to the effect of wartime deployment on youth—and even less to what could be done to effectively support the children of military parents reintegrating after deployments. Given that military children are much more likely than their peers to serve in the military (between 22% and 35% of new recruits report they have a parent who served, and 77% to 86% report that a close relative served),2 this collective lack of attention not only compromises the ability to meet their individual care needs but also undermines our national interest in the health and well-being of our future military force.
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