"This final overarching report in a series documents research and recommendations RAND offered to the Air Force to help strengthen the development of a new office responsible for monitoring and promoting resilience among Air Force Airmen, civilian employees, and Air Force families. Efforts to boost resilience have become an important military response to suicide and other markers of distress and poor health. The report reviews the concepts and measures of resilience, resilience factors, hardiness and flourishing. It describes how resilience and the military's Total Force Fitness concepts are related. The report brings together highlights from the eight companion reports on each Total Force Fitness domain and characterizes types of Air Force data that could be used to track resilience."-- Provided on the publisher's website.

Morale, Welfare, and Recreation (MWR) programs and services are considered an integral part of resilient and ready Airmen and families. However, the Air Force currently lacks an evidence-informed evaluation framework for MWR programs, especially one that identifies short-term and intermediate outcomes that contribute to Airman and family resilience and readiness. A necessary first step in determining the possible impact of the MWR portfolio is to identify, and then assess, the contributions of each individual program or service. To understand the ways that MWR programs can contribute to resilience and readiness, the Air Force asked RAND researchers to develop an evidence-informed framework that links program and service activities to such outcomes and provides guidance on collecting and managing the data needed to measure those outcomes. To accomplish this, the authors developed a model of resilience and readiness building blocks-that is, precursors to overall resilience and readiness identified through a review of existing literature. They then used this model as the basis for comparing the building blocks and short-term and intermediate outcomes targeted by programs and services within the MWR portfolio. Together, these two efforts allow the Air Force to examine whether and how the MWR portfolio could be used to foster resilience and readiness across the total force. The report concludes with a discussion of next steps that the Air Force can take to move closer to evaluating the capabilities of the MWR portfolio with respect to enhancing Airman and family resilience and readiness.

Morale, Welfare, and Recreation (MWR) programs are key to building resilient and ready Airmen and families. The authors develop a resilience and readiness model, compare it to target outcomes of MWR services, and suggest next steps for evaluation.

Most leaders in the Department of Defense (DoD) agree that family resilience is an important construct, yet DoD does not have a standard definition. The authors of this report review existing definitions of family resilience and offer a candidate definition for DoD use. They also review models of family resilience, identify key family resilience factors, and make recommendations for how DoD can manage family-resilience programs and policies.

The U.S. military has been continuously engaged in foreign conflicts for over two decades. The strains that these deployments, the associated increases in operational tempo, and the general challenges of military life affect not only service members but also the people who depend on them and who support them as they support the nation â€" their families. Family members provide support to service members while they serve or when they have difficulties; family problems can interfere with the ability of service members to deploy or remain in theater; and family members are central influences on whether members continue to serve. In addition, rising family diversity and complexity will likely increase the difficulty of creating military policies, programs and practices that adequately support families in the performance of military duties. Strengthening the Military Family Readiness System for a Changing American Society examines the challenges and opportunities facing military families and what is known about effective strategies for supporting and protecting military children and families, as well as lessons to be learned from these experiences. This report offers recommendations regarding what is needed to strengthen the support system for military families.

One of a series of reports designed to support Air Force leadership in promoting resilience among Airmen, its civilian employees, and Air Force family members, this report examines social fitness, or the combination of resources from social connections that influence how individuals respond to stressful circumstances. It assesses the current social fitness constructs and measures in scientific literature to identify methods of increasing social connectedness and support among U.S. Airmen and their families.

This reference examines the wide-ranging impact of military life on families, parenting, and child development. It examines the complex family needs of this diverse population, especially as familiar issues such as trauma, domestic violence, and child abuse manifest differently than in civilian life. Expert contributors review findings on deployed mothers, active-duty fathers, and other military parents while offering evidence for interventions and prevention programs to enhance children’s healthy adjustment in this highly structured yet uncertain context. Its emphasis on resource and policy improvements keeps the book focused on the evolution of military families in the face of future change and challenges. Included in the coverage: Impacts of military life on young children and their parents. Parenting school-age children and adolescents through military deployments. Parenting in military families faced with combat-related injury, illness, or death. The special case of civilian service members: supporting parents in the National Guard and Reserves. Interventions to support and strengthen parenting in military families: state of the evidence. Military parenting in the digital age: existing practices, new possibilities. Addressing a major need in family and parenting studies, Parenting and Children’s Resilience in Military Families is necessary reading for scholars and practitioners interested in parenting and military family research.