"The Community Quarterback: Veterans and their Families are Coming Home. Are we Ready?" is the latest publication from the USC Center for Innovation and Research on Veterans & Military Families. To successfully support military-impacted populations transitioning home, communities need a coordinated approach that brings together diverse sets of resources and identifies new opportunities across public and private sectors -- a community quarterback.
Because of medical advances, this generation of post-9/11 veterans is now surviving injuries once considered fatal and returning to communities that may be ill-prepared to care for them. A recent summit convened by the Gary Sinise Foundation and CIR brought together experts in physical, psychological and community needs to discuss challenges facing severely wounded warriors and their caregivers, whose work often goes unnoticed. Read more
Ron Avi Astor, the Richard M. and Ann L. Thor Professor of Urban Social Development at the USC School of Social Work, was featured in a CBS Sunday Morning news story discussing the effect a parent's military deployment can have on families, especially the children, whose mental health is adversely affected. In this way, these kids could be considered "collateral damage." Watch now
USC President C. L. Max Nikias and a delegation of university leaders, including CIR Director Anthony Hassan, met with key policymakers in Washington, D.C., emphasizing the university's ongoing commitment to issues that affect U.S. military personnel, veterans and their families. During the trip, Nikias unveiled the Provost's Pre-College Summer Scholarship for Military High School Students. Read more
Delivering this year's Edward R. Roybal Memorial Lecture, former U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs and former U.S. Secretary of the Army Togo West Jr. said unprecedented health and social challenges face today's returning military service members, and they will only mount as veterans age. "Among all the ways in which nations can and should be judged, one of them has to be how they care for those who in a time of crisis cared for [them]." Read more
