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CONTRACT SUMMARY 8 health, including their own published work (Stellman SD et al., 1988a, 1988b; Stellman JM et al., 1988; Snow et al., 1988), the contractors hypothesized that the experience of combat might have a profound effect both on subsequent health and on such important lifestyle factors as smoking and drinking, which, in turn, heavily influence disease outcomes. They thus undertook a large-scale survey of veterans to gather and evaluate the association among demographic, socio-economic status and behavior variables; military service history; self- reported exposures to herbicides and to combat; measures of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other psychiatric symptoms; and numerous health outcomes. A focused study of women veterans was also conducted and an outreach effort was conducted to involve black and Hispanic veterans in order to evaluate the generalizability of such measures. The working plan proposed by the contractor consisted of five8 interrelated projects on various methodologic aspects of characterizing herbicide exposures of American troops who served in Vietnam. Each project was related to an aspect of the historical reconstruction of exposure to herbicides. The projects were as follows: Project 1: Military Unit and Herbicide Spraying Databases, and Exposure Assessment Model Development ⢠Compilation and assessment of data on troop locations. ⢠Collection of data on the application of herbicides in the wartime aerial spraying program and other releases such as perimeter spraying. ⢠Analysis of the database contents to evaluate their suitability for use in the historical reconstruction of exposure to herbicides. ⢠Development and refinement of a means of characterizing wartime exposure of US veterans to herbicides. 8 A sixth proposed project would have developed priorities and methods for epidemiologic research based on the findings of Projects 1â5, other available health-outcome databases, and additional technical and pragmatic considerations. This project was not included in the final contract, because a decision was made to focus on activities related to the development of an exposure-assessment model.
