JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, Alaska —  

As winter approaches, residents of Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, prepare for the impending challenges of the changing season. Those new to the installation may be blindsided to the conditions the Alaska winter will bring. Proper preparation is the key to having a safe and successful winter, especially on the roads.

“Novice drivers are most at risk,” said U.S. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Devin Smith, noncommissioned officer in charge of the 673d Air Base Wing Safety office. “Those new to Alaska, or new to driving in snow, may not realize how dangerous the roads can get in winter. It’s essential to drive slower, leave earlier than usual, and know the road conditions before heading out.”

The main hazards winter brings are the slick roads and reduced visibility. Rapidly falling snow and lack of sunlight in the middle of the winter can make a simple drive to work similar to driving with a blindfold on, Smith added.

In the event of black ice or white-out conditions, Smith advised taking specific precautions. 

“If you encounter black ice, do not slam on the brakes,” he said. “If your vehicle begins to slide, turn into the skid, and always keep a safe distance from the vehicle in front of you.” 

During white-out conditions, Smith emphasized slowing down, increasing following distance, and avoiding sudden lane changes or rapid braking.

Whenever the temperature falls to 45 F or lower, Smith recommends switching to winter tires. Studded tires offer more traction on ice; winter tires in general are recommended. Just remember to remove them before May 1 to comply with Alaska law. Along with tire maintenance, Smith added the importance of ensuring vehicle batteries are in good condition, switching to winter-grade oil, and checking windshield wipers.

In addition to Smith’s vehicle-maintenance preparedness tips, he also recommends all drivers carry an emergency kit in their vehicle.

“An emergency kit is essential for the winter,” Smith said. “It should include items to stay warm and visible, and devices to stay informed. Pre-made kits are available for purchase, or drivers can create their own with essential items like blankets, a flashlight, a first-aid kit, and non-perishable food.”

Though these tips are crucial to having a successful winter traveling experience in Alaska, Smith advocates the most basic tips for vehicle operation: slow down.

“Drivers should accelerate with caution; icy road conditions reduce traction,” said Smith. “Maintain a safe distance at all times. Increasing your distance allows more space and time to react in unsafe driving conditions.”

The original article can be found here Preparing for Alaska winter: Essential tips for JBER’s newcomers > Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson > News

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Native American women, like their male counterparts, share a proud tradition of military service. 

During the Revolutionary War, Tyonajanegan, an Oneida, fought on the side of the United States with her husband during the Battle of Oriskany, Aug. 6, 1777, in New York. She died in 1824 at the age of 84. 

The first active duty Native American women were four Sioux nuns, serving as Army nurses during the Spanish-American War, in 1898. One of them died in Cuba from an illness and was buried with military honors. 

During World War I, 14 Native American women were in the Army Nurse Corps. 

Charlotte Edith Anderson Monture, a Mohawk from Ontario, Canada, graduated from nursing school in New York in 1914 and found work there. In April 1917, when the United States entered the war, she volunteered for the Army Nurse Corps. 

In February 1918, she sailed to France where she treated wounded soldiers in the hospital and on the battlefield. After the war, she moved back to her reservation in Canada and continued her nursing practice there. In April 1996, she died at age 106. 

About 800 Native American women served in uniform during World War II. Thousands of others who were civilians worked in factories on the home front producing arms for the war effort. 

Marge Pascale, an Ojibwe, joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Corps, or WAAC, in 1943. “One thing about the service, you get two pair of shoes and you get a bed and you get to eat,” she said, having experienced poverty. 

Margie Williams, a Lakota Sioux, said during World War II, “It is with much pride that the Indian woman dons the uniform of her country to aid in settling the turmoil.” 

Ola Rexroat, an Oglala-Lakota, was the only Native American woman to serve in the Women Airforce Service Pilots during World War II. She flew AT-6 and PT-19 airplanes and towed targets for aerial gunners. 

Following the war, Rexroat became an air traffic controller for the newly formed Air Force, making it a career. She also saw service during the Korean War. 

Marine Corps Pvt. Minnie Spotted-Wolf enlisted in July 1943, becoming the first female Native American to join that service. 

In 1980, 60 Native American women were serving in the Alaska National Guard as Eskimo Scouts, patrolling the west coast of Alaska. 

Terri Ann Hagen, an Army National Guard medic, was killed in 1994 while fighting a fire on Storm King Mountain in Colorado. 

Many Native American women served in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. Army Spc. Lori Piestewa, a Hopi, was killed in Iraq, March 23, 2003, when her convoy was ambushed. She was the first Native American female soldier killed in action on foreign soil. 

Squaw Peak, near Phoenix, Arizona, was renamed Piestewa Peak in her honor. 

Pfc. Jennifer Ruth Knowshisgun, an intelligence analyst at the 91st Engineer Battalion, 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, from the northern Cheyenne and Crow Nations, said that her two years in the Army has helped her to develop leadership skills. 

“The Army has given me more responsibilities,” said Knowshisgun, speaking at Fort Hood, Texas, now named Fort Cavazos, Nov. 20, 2015. “I’m still a private, but I’ve gotten the chance to help out by getting the new soldiers situated into our unit.” 

Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class Trinity Sells, carried a protection arrow passed down from her ancestors during a National Native American Heritage Month ceremony onboard the aircraft carrier USS George Washington, at Newport News, Virginia, Nov. 14, 2018. The arrow is said to offer protection from evil spirits entering their soul or household.  

“I take pride in being an American Indian sailor,” said Sells. “I will continue my traditional way of life with more determination because living isn’t enough for my heritage to survive. It is my time to teach the Navy about the Navajo tribe and its people.” 

The original article can be found here Native American Women Take Pride in Their Military Service > U.S. Department of Defense > Story

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Published: Nov. 14, 2024 at 3:55 PM AKST

FAIRBANKS, Alaska (KTVF)—The day after Veterans Day, the Department of Defense gave an address and wrote about the legacy of Indigenous people in the armed forces as part of Native American Heritage Month.

For centuries, Native Americans have been a part of military history in the United States, from fighting alongside the Continental Army against the British to serving around the world today. The success of American forces couldn’t have happened without the indigenous soldiers of the country.

On Nov. 12, Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks provided a 53-second address acknowledging the efforts and importance of Native Americans in the armed forces. “The talents of the thousands of American Indians and Alaska Natives who serve in our military today has been key to building and maintaining the finest fighting force in the world,” said Hicks. She also noted the unique contributions of certain groups, such as the Navajo, who used their language to create an unbreakable code during World War II.

The legacy of Native Americans in the military is also strong in the last frontier, where Alaska Natives served in the military since World War I, according to Benno Cleveland, a member of the Alaska Native Veterans Association.

Alaska Natives also have the highest rate of military service compared to other ethnicities. According the Dept. of Veterans Affairs, American Indians and Alaska Natives have served at a higher rate than any other race with 17% of that population enlisting into America’s defense forces.

Cleveland said that service is carried out with dignity and honor despite the historic trauma carried out against Alaska Natives and American Indians alike. “We people of the land, we understood that this was still our land, and it was still our people, and we would continue to serve to protect that land and our people,” he said. “Then, as we became citizens, then we also swore an oath to the United States to protect the constitution, the land, and our people, and we continue to do that up to this day.”

While the experience of that service has varied over time, from person to person, Cleveland spoke positively about his experience. “When we joined up with the military, we took our oath and no matter what branch we went into, there was no differences between being native, a white soldier, black soldier or an oriental, we were all one.”

On Veterans Day, Sen. Dan Sullivan, a Marine veteran himself, also noted the difficulties that have faced that legacy in Alaska as apologies are still being made to the communities that were once attacked by their own country. Specifically, the attacks on the communities of Kake and Angoon were made by the U.S. Navy shortly after purchasing Alaska from Russia.

Copyright 2024 KTVF. All rights reserved.

The original story can be found here Dept. of Defense celebrates the legacy of Native Americans in the armed forces

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Updated: Wednesday, October 11th 2017, 8:58 pm AKDT

By adding 100 more staff members, the director of the Alaska VA said the organization will improve access to care for the state’s veterans.

Dr. Timothy Ballard addressed improvements the VA is working to make, after negative reviews from both patients and staff. He said the 100 new positions are focused on mental health care and support functions. It grows the staff at the Alaska VA from 550 to 650 at a cost of $6 million. Ballard said the money is being “repurposed” from other places in the budget.

When asked why some of the jobs are focused on mental health, Ballard said it’s because the current staff is over-used, so they sometimes have to send patients outside the system for care. By expanding what they can offer, he said it’s a win-win for veterans and the VA.

“Any opportunity that we can have staff in-house to provide those mental health services — it’s at a significant benefit to the veteran because they get more timely access to that care but it’s also at a fairly significant savings,” said Ballard.

He said besides adding positions, they’re also increasing the speed at which they’re filling vacancies, down from six months to six weeks. For example, the Mat-Su Clinic has a physician for the first time in five years, with another starting in March.

Ballard said they’ve also seen improvements for veterans trying to schedule appointments. When the Choice Program first started, vets had to use out-of-state call centers to set up visits, which caused a lot of issues. Ballard said they’ve brought scheduling back in-house and resolved a lot of those problems.

Along with a rise in staff morale, he said things are looking up for the Alaska VA.

“The light at the end of the tunnel is getting larger and larger every day with the degree of resources we’ve put together to take care of veterans and there’s a lot of exciting opportunities to come in the future,” said Ballard

Original post can be viewed here: http://www.ktva.com/story/36577263/changes-coming-to-va-healthcare-system

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Aired 8/8/17 on KPBS News

The Veterans Health Administration is searching for ways to wean veterans off pain medication. A new study from the San Diego VA shows that the right kind of yoga can be a long term solution.

The Veterans Health Administration is searching for ways to wean veterans off pain medication. A new study from the San Diego VA shows that the right kind of yoga can be a long term solution.

“It’s an ongoing battle. A struggle. Sometimes I’ve had to call in sick because I can’t get out of bed,” said Matthew Castro, who works at the VA in San Diego. Lower back pain has haunted him since his time in the Navy.

Castro has three prescriptions for pain pills, but he said that he rarely fills them after he began learning yoga nearly three years ago. He was one of 150 veterans who were part of a VA study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine on July 20, 2017.

VIDEO BY KATIE SCHOOLOV

“I wasn’t too sure about it, but I thought it would be a better option than to be put on more medication,” Castro said.

Researchers at the San Diego VA looked specifically at how yoga can lessen lower back pain among veterans. It’s a group that hasn’t been studied outside the VA, Researcher Erik Groessl said.

“Military veterans have higher rates of back pain, probably due to rigorous training as well as combat experiences,” Groessl said.

Veteran Matthew Castro practices yoga at the La Jolla VA, August 1, 2017.

Vets are older and have more health problems than the other groups that have been studied. The study showed vets who took a yoga class twice a week were using less pain medication and had a better range of motion.

“At six months we found less fatigue. We found overall quality of life was better,” Groessl said.

Roughly 70 percent of VAs nationwide offer some form of yoga. What they offer varies widely. The San Diego study gives VA doctors a clearer sense of what actually works. A separate study is underway in Indiana to document the benefits of yoga on PTSD.

Original article can be viewed at: http://www.kpbs.org/news/2017/aug/08/va-study-shows-yoga-can-lower-dependence-pain-meds/

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PHILADELPHIA (CBS)–David Shulkin, the Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs appeared on The Rich Zeoli Show on Talk Radio 1210 WPHT to discuss the improvements that have been made since the Department became entangled with scandals in recent years over veterans being delayed in receiving the care or, in some cases, dying before they get it, saying that the situation continues to improve.

“We are making a lot of changes. We’re modernizing the VA. We’re making sure that our services are provided in a timely fashion. We’re making sure that veterans aren’t waiting as long when they need the type of services that they are and we’re making sure that the right people are serving in the VA and those that aren’t, we’re getting them out of the VA.”

He stated they are dedicated to changing the management culture to ensure their patients receive the best possible outcomes.

“We know that all of our future customers come from one place, and that’s the Department of Defense. So, we believe that when somebody enlists to serve this country through the end of their life, that their information should be one place so that we can access their information and not lose it. It only makes sense. One of the things that I’m trying to do as Secretary is to make sure that decisions that have been passed along for decades don’t get passed along any further and we just do the right thing for our veterans and make the hard choices.”

However, Shulkin did complain about a recent decision from the Merit Systems Protection Board that reinstated Brian Hawkins, the former head of the VA Medical Center in Washington, who was originally fired for sending personal emails about conditions inside the hospital.

“In our Washington DC VA, we found that our Director, the person who runs it, was letting the environment become really an unsafe environment, so we did remove them and I did fire them. This was prior to any law changes. Just a few days ago, the judge brought them back. Even though I fired him, he’s now back as a VA employee and, frankly, that’s pretty demoralizing. So, we now have a new law, which was passed and signed by the President not too long ago that gives me as Secretary new authority to make sure that that doesn’t happen again.”

Original article can be viewed at: http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2017/08/10/va-sec-depart-modernizing-cutting-wait/ 

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Gov. Bill Walker issued an order Tuesday officially declaring the state’s opioid crisis a public health disaster.

The disaster declaration was designed to create a legal basis for the state to issue a medical “standing order” that allows community groups, law enforcement and members of the public to dispense and administer naloxone, an anti-overdose medication, said Dr. Jay Butler, Alaska’s chief medical officer.

Alaska used a $5 million federal grant on naloxone kits it is now distributing through a program run by the state Division of Public Health. The medical standing order was issued Tuesday, Butler said.

“It seems like a bit of an unorthodox approach, but other states have used similar mechanisms,” said Butler.

Butler, who has a background in infectious disease, said he thought it was the first time the state had used a disaster declaration to respond to a public health crisis.

The opioid order is the 11th disaster declaration Walker has issued. Others include a December storm in Western Alaska, landslides in Sitka, flooding on the Dalton Highway and a washateria fire in Alatna.

Declaring opioid abuse a public health disaster usually reserved for events like floods, earthquakes and fires holds extra rhetorical weight, said Butler.

The disaster declaration shouldn’t cost the state any additional money, according to supporting materials released with the declaration.

Butler, an infectious disease specialist, said he is cautious about using the term “epidemic.” But he says it’s appropriate in talking about opioid abuse in Alaska.

Nationally, heroin abuse began to rise about 15 years ago, according to Butler. Prescription painkiller deaths increased in Alaska about a decade ago. Heroin hit hard starting five or six years ago: The declaration says the number of heroin-associated deaths in Alaska quadrupled between 2009 and 2015.

The epidemic has changed, but the wave hasn’t crested yet. In the past two years, treacherous painkillers like fentanyl have become more prominent in the state, he said. And most recently, novel lab-made forms of synthetic opioids have appeared.

The declaration “comes in response to the growing number of overdoses attributed to opioid abuse and the evidence that highly dangerous synthetic opioids have made their way into Alaska.”

“It’s hard to know what’s going to come next,” he said.

A letter to legislators signed by Walker says emergency responders in communities from Juneau to Fairbanks have been “overwhelmed” with opioid overdoses.

Alaska is not the only state to declare opioid abuse a disaster.

In November, Virginia’s governor issued a similar declaration.

Butler said the disaster declaration is only a temporary solution to getting anti-overdose drugs to the public.

Clearly, getting anti-overdose drugs to more people is only one part of responding to opioid abuse, Butler said.

More Alaskans still die of alcohol-related diseases than opioid abuse.

“We need to move beyond molecule-specific responses to look more broadly at how we treat addictions.”

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David Shulkin, MD

2014 was a pivotal moment for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). A nonstop drumbeat of media accounts reported an access crisis involving long waitlists for health care and, worse, suggested that some veterans were dying while waiting for care.

The extent of the VA’s problems, like access issues in many other health care systems, was not immediately clear. However, the VA had difficult-to-understand wait time measures, outdated scheduling software, and arbitrary and unrealistic scheduling metrics. The confluence of these problems led to allegations of secret waitlists and resulted in veterans losing trust in the VA.

In the wake of the crisis and in response to public outcry and new requirements from Congress, the VA began publicly posting wait-time data (1). Few if any other health systems had ever done this. The VA was breaking new ground. We consulted with the National Academy of Medicine and other industry and thought leaders (2). It became clear that no standards for wait times existed; the VA would have to create a new set of definitions and terminology.

To be transparent and comprehensive, the VA produced reports with many wait-time metrics. These included when veterans requested an appointment (create date), when they wanted the appointment (preferred date), and when clinicians felt the appointment
was necessary (clinically indicated date). This resulted in 22 variations of pending and completed appointments. With almost 58 million appointments a year at more than 1000 locations and a large number of descriptive statistics for each appointment, the result was a data dump in Microsoft Excel spreadsheets (3). Although accurate, these metrics had little meaning to members of Congress who were holding the department accountable, to media reporting on the VA, or to taxpayers who fund the department. Most important, the metrics meant little to veterans who rely on VA care.

I recall sitting for a radio interview and trying to interpret our online wait-time data. It became apparent to me that we had created metrics so complex that, despite my best efforts, few listeners were likely to understand what I said. I realized then that we needed a better system. We needed reports on wait times that veterans could use to make informed decisions and administrators could use to improve our system.

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WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump on Thursday declared the country’s opioid crisis a national emergency, saying the epidemic exceeded anything he had seen with other drugs in his lifetime.

The statement by the president came in response to a question as he spoke to reporters outside a national security briefing at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, where he is on a working vacation.

“The opioid crisis is an emergency, and I’m saying officially right now it is an emergency. It’s a national emergency. We’re going to spend a lot of time, a lot of effort and a lot of money on the opioid crisis,” he said.

Last week, the President’s Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis, which is led by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), issued a preliminary report that described the overdose death toll as “September 11th every three weeks” and urged the president to declare a national emergency.

On Tuesday, Trump received an extended briefing on the subject in Bedminster. White House aides said Trump was still reviewing the report and was not yet ready to announce which of its recommendations he would embrace.

A White House statement issued Thursday evening said that Trump “has instructed his Administration to use all appropriate emergency and other authorities to respond to the crisis caused by the opioid epidemic.”

The scale of the crisis, which has been building for well over a decade, is such that a presidential declaration may not have much immediate impact. It should allow the administration to remove some bureaucratic barriers and waive some federal rules governing how states and localities respond to the drug epidemic. One such rule restricts where Medicaid recipients can receive addiction treatment.

The emergency declaration may allow the government to deploy the equivalent of its medical cavalry, the U.S. Public Health Service, a uniformed service of physicians and other staffers that can target places with little medical care or drug treatment, said Andrew Kolodny, co-director of opioid policy research at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University. He said the DEA might be able to use the emergency to require prescriber education for doctors and others who dispense opioids.

“There’s a lot that could be done. It could be very helpful, much more than just symbolic,” he said.

Governors in Arizona, Florida, Maryland and Virginia have already declared emergencies. And in recent months, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, Congress, physician groups and the insurance industry have taken institutional steps to address the crisis. At the street level, police, firefighters and paramedics now routinely carry naloxone (brand name Narcan), the anti-overdose drug that can yank an addict back from the brink of death.

Drug addiction is a widespread and growing problem, with an estimated 2.6 million opioid addicts in the United States.

The report issued last week states: “The opioid epidemic we are facing is unparalleled. The average American would likely be shocked to know that drug overdoses now kill more people than gun homicides and car crashes combined.”

The report actually understated the lethality of the epidemic. The commission based its estimate of the number of fatal drug overdoses on 2015 statistics, when 52,404 people died of overdoses of all drugs, including opioids, for an average of 142 a day. But new federal data covering the first nine months of 2016 showed that the death toll jumped significantly since 2015 and could reach 60,000 once the numbers are all in for that year.

In Thursday’s briefing, Trump said, “It is a serious problem, the likes of which we’ve never had. You know, when I was growing up, they had the LSD, and they had certain generations of drugs. There’s never been anything like what’s happened to this country over the last four or five years.”

Opioids are a broad category of legal and illegal drugs, ranging from prescription painkillers to heroin. In the past couple of years, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration, much of the street-level heroin in the United States has been laced with illicit fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid that is much cheaper to produce than heroin.

Addicts often say they want the most powerful drug they can find and often seek batches of drugs that have been linked to rashes of overdoses.

Although heroin has been around for a long time, the current opioid crisis has its origin in the 1990s, when the pharmaceutical industry marketed new formulations of prescription opioids. Soon they flooded the market, making the United States by far the world’s leading consumer of such painkillers.

At the beginning of this decade, government officials shut down many “pill mills” in which doctors dispensed huge numbers of prescription opioids, and many addicts switched to street heroin.

An analysis published in June by The Washington Post showed that death rates for Americans aged 25 to 44 have risen since the beginning of the decade, a trend seen across almost all racial and ethnic groups and significantly driven by the opioid epidemic. Once stereotyped as a problem in largely white, rural and economically depressed Rust Belt communities, the opioid epidemic has been killing large numbers of people of all races in big cities in recent years – many of them unwittingly having bought packets of powder in which heroin or cocaine has been mixed with fentanyl.

“We’re not going to arrest our way out of this epidemic,” Alexander said.

– – –

The Washington Post’s Jenna Johnson contributed to this report.

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