By Armed Forces Health Surveillance Public Affairs

Adapted from the article, 'The Medical Surveillance Monthly Report: The First 30 Years,' in the April 2024 MSMR.

This year marks a significant milestone for the Medical Surveillance Monthly Report as we celebrate its 30th anniversary.

Throughout its three decades, MSMR has continuously improved its content with the goal of providing readers with unbiased, scientifically rigorous, evidence-based medical surveillance information on the current status, trends, and determinants of the physical and mental health of U.S. military service members.

“MSMR’s role within and supporting the overall mission of the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Division, Public Health Division, and the Defense Health Agency remains vital,” said MSMR editor-in-chief Robert Johnson, MD, MPH, MBA.

“The need for appropriate database utilization, information review, and methodologically valid analysis remains the ‘gold standard’ of epidemiological surveillance and medical knowledge development,” said Johnson.

MSMR aims to provide military public health leaders and line staff officers with timely access to militarily-relevant, readiness-focused, routine and specialized reports. This access also helps them to identify and contain outbreaks, understand disease burden, guide policy changes, and evaluate and improve prevention and control strategies.

MSMR History

The need for a publication like MSMR became evident in the early 1990s due to the lack of distribution of routine periodic medical surveillance in the U.S. military, worsened by the end of publication of service-specific surveillance reports, including Health of the Army and Statistics of Navy Medicine in the late 1980s. At the time, there were no ready or centrally available sources of timely and reliable information on existing medical threats, and published insights on medical situational awareness were generally out-of-date, incomplete, and largely uninformative.

One of MSMR’s core functions was to report routine monthly surveillance statistics not otherwise readily available to intended readership. MSMR was also intended to emulate, for the U.S. military, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, or MMWR, published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Like MMWR, MSMR is a mechanism to distribute public health data and reports, targeted mostly to military public health professionals, in addition to military commanders, leaders, and policymakers, as well as the scientific and lay press.

MSMR Milestones

Since its beginning, MSMR has achieved many milestones. In 2011, it was accepted for indexing in MEDLINE, the principal online bibliographic citation database of the National Library of Medicine’s MEDLARS® system. MSMR’s inclusion in MEDLINE not only helped to expand the scope and reach of MSMR’s content, but also increased the number and quality of external submissions from potential authors.

The establishment of the Defense Health Agency formally consolidated the medical services of all branches of the U.S. military, which included integration of all U.S. military public health surveillance activities. These integration efforts reinforced MSMR’s focus on reporting results for all service branches.

Over the past decade, MSMR has continued to explore ways to expand and improve its content and make it more readily usable to readers. MSMR increased its production of thematic issues and made significant efforts to engage subject matter experts throughout the Military Health System. These thematic issues have focused on a wide range of subjects including overall health, mental and behavioral health, heat illness and injury, sexually transmitted infections, gastrointestinal infections, and vision-related conditions. A Global Emerging Infections Surveillance-themed issue featured surveillance reports from GEIS partners.

U.S. Navy Capt. Richard Langton, MD, MPH, chief of AFHSD, confirmed the publication’s value.

“For 30 years, the MSMR has advanced military public health surveillance, research, policy, practice, and education influencing the discussion at the intersection of health readiness and military operations," Langton said. "Congratulations to the MSMR team for the standard they’ve set for military health surveillance. May the great reporting continue for the next thirty years.”

As MSMR enters its 31st year, its editorial staff aims to continue its tradition of excellence while making its content more clinically relevant, continuing to increase collaboration with external agencies and individuals, publishing topics of military relevance, and making practical, military-specific recommendations.

The Defense Health Agency supports our Nation by improving health and building readiness–making extraordinary experiences ordinary and exceptional outcomes routine.

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