US Department of Defense
BLAST INJURY RESEARCH
COORDINATING OFFICE
Advancing Blast Injury Research to Protect and Heal Those Who Serve

US & Israel Collaborate to Advance Military Medicine

Representatives from US and Israeli military medicine participated in the 2017 Shoresh Conference on March 27-29 in Rockville, Maryland, to discuss a broad array of medical research issues. More than 60 Israelis, primarily from the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), and more than 300 representatives from across the US, participated in the conference, which included both plenary and working group sessions.

The biennial Shoresh Conference is the key event and primary venue for the exchange of information under the US/Israel Data Exchange Agreement (DEA) for Military Medicine. The 2017 Shoresh conference was the 18th in the series, which began in the 1980's and continues to be a valuable opportunity to bring together the top scientists and researchers from the US and Israel to find medical solutions for common military threats.

For the 2017 Shoresh Conference, the DoD Blast Injury Research Program Coordinating Office (PCO) and the USAMRDC Combat Casualty Care Research Program (CCCRP) co-organized a joint combat casualty care/blast injury working group session that focused on blast injury prevention. At this working group, PCO Director, Mr. Leggieri, discussed a PCO initiative for constructing a framework for modeling and simulating human lethality, injury, and impairment from blast-related threats. In addition, PCO Deputy Director, Dr. Gupta, discussed another PCO initiative to preserve and disseminate historical DoD blast data. Additional presentations in the working group session covered a range of topics, including: genitourinary injuries in Service Members; prediction of carbon monoxide toxicity, environmental sensors in training; and novel concepts in head protection.

During the conference, Mr. Leggieri, Dr. Gupta, and IDF representatives identified several opportunities for future partnerships, including sharing of blast injury research data (e.g., US historical blast bioeffects data and data from IDF blast injury research) and participation of an IDF representative on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Human Factors and Medicine (HFM) Research Task Groups (RTG) initiated by PCO leadership.

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Last modified: 04-Apr-2023