Trauma Coalition
Outside Witness Testimony, Fiscal Year 2021 Appropriations
Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and
Education, and Related Agencies
Department of Health and Human Services
22 May 2020
As you consider Labor Health and Human Services appropriations for Fiscal Year FY (2021),
the Trauma Coalition, a broad group of organizations representing the nations frontline trauma
providers, writes to ask the Committee to provide $11.5 million in funding for the Military
and Civilian Partnership for the Trauma Readiness Grant Program.
In 2016, the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) released a
report titled, “A National Trauma Care System: Integrating Military and Civilian Trauma
Systems to Achieve Zero Preventable Deaths After Injury.” This report finds that one of four
military trauma deaths and one of five civilian trauma deaths could be prevented if advances in
trauma care reach all injured patients. In the report, the National Academies recommended that
the United States adopt an overall aim for trauma care of “zero preventable deaths after injury,”
and sets forth elements of system redesign that would provide military personnel with real-world
training and experience at civilian trauma centers. This training has the dual benefit of
maintaining military surgical battle readiness between wars while at the same time improving
civilian access to trauma care. The report concludes that military and civilian integration is
critical to saving these lives both on the battlefield and at home, preserving the hard-won lessons
of war, and maintaining the nation’s readiness and homeland security.
Read full article here
