Letter to Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Plans, Gail H. McGinn

4 September, 2009


Dear Gail H. McGinn, Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Plans,

I am a military spouse, stay-at-home mom, and mother to a 2 1/2 year old. I represent overseas military families requesting family fitness programs as free services to assist them in handling the extraordinary challenges they face when stationed overseas in support of their active duty family members. I believe the proposal posted at http://militaryfamilyfitness.blogspot.com/ (FamFit) is the most functional way to implement a free fitness program for military families.

The key characteristics of FamFit:

1. Can be implemented on a trial basis, involving at onset only the twelve largest overseas Army and Air Force Installations which host a significant number of forces who deploy to war zones. The program's success in significantly reducing costs associated with symptoms such as obesity, depression, divorce, illicit drug use, gambling, and health issues (such as those associated with abnormal lipid levels and hypertension), and success in significantly improving overall community fitness levels, will justify discussion concerning its implementation in domestic or smaller installations.

2. Proposes hiring two additional GS-11 Health Educators (position descriptions are provided online) within Health and Wellness Centers supporting overseas Army and Air Force Installations. The Health Educators will, within 20 working days of the outset of their employment, research and justify whether to contract a civilian agency to provide fitness center training, or to create NAF positions for trainers certified in any family-friendly fitness program. Health Educators will recommend a programming structure they believe will prove most effective in building fitness levels of their installation's military families, and can include any combination of certifications in their Trainers such as Yoga, CrossFit, Postnatal sport, etc. Health Educators will also be responsible for participants' periodic completion of fitness progress assessments, and for formal submission back to the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports detailing strengths, weaknesses, and lessons learned, prior to fiscal year close. This will enforce Health Educators' accountability on a public scale, will stimulate pursuit of excellence through competition between U.S. Forces Installations, and will allow mutually beneficial knowledge-sharing of optimal fitness programming (the Council will post fitness programs' details online). Installations exhibiting superior fitness programming will be recognized and rewarded. Such a program will allow freedom of specification and execution within military installations, while encouraging fierce competition among installations and insuring monetary accountability to American tax payers, holding two GS-11 Health Educators responsible for annual quantifiable fitness improvements within the military families they serve. Such a program will promote fitness enrolment and involvement even among the greater American civilian population.

3. Contracting or hiring decisions concerning programming structure (deciding which employees with which fitness certifications to hire, or which contracted organization will be outsourced to provide fitness training), would be made at installation-level, and performed on a one-year trial basis in order to eliminate any perception that the Department of Defense endorses any one fitness program or contracted organization. At the close of each fiscal year, employees and contracted organizations will be at the mercy of free market; any employee holding any particular mix of fitness certifications and any organization who can contract fitness training services is eligible for a one-year trial. Quality programs and quality certifications will rise to the top but will be forced to stay competitive. The military family stands to benefit the most from such a programming concept.

4. The total cost of the Military Family Fitness program to the US Government is approximately 2.4Million (estimating a median figure of 10k military/civilian family members per installation, the cost of funding two GS-11s per participating installation to be $150k/year, restricting Health Educators' total expenditure on trainers to under $50 per eligible client per year and restricting total new equipment costs to under $10,000 per fitness facility).

Overseas military communities have proven the community need for family-member-accessible fitness programs. Testimonials report improved mental health, radically changed outlooks, and reformed lifestyles. No other program or service with such so nominal a price tag could deliver as qualitatively comparable a measure of improvement on self-esteem, health, social support, and mental stability for the military family as a Family Fitness Program.

Thank you sincerely for your time and consideration of this request.

Respectfully,
Ginger Sladky