Letter to Senator Cornyn

Dear Senator Cornyn,

I’m a military spouse and stay-at-home mom to a 2 ½ year old. I am proposing a government-funded fitness program for military families stationed overseas. This year which may be designated the Year of the Military Family, such a proposal has an excellent chance of gaining bi-partisan emphasis and tenacious support. I really respect all your work with fitness/health promotion, including the pending WHIP Act, and would really appreciate your endorsement of this proposal.

More programs are needed which provide sources of reliable and quantifiable support to military family members, especially those stationed overseas, who are currently struggling disproportionately against depression, stress, gambling, illicit drug use, and other destructive behaviors. Such programs exist, and military families have been calling for them in droves. Overseas military families are offered a steady supply of activities, programs and services to keep them occupied and constructively engaged, but none bolster their self-esteem, their health, and their mental stability comparably to Family Fitness Programs. Fitness programs and activities encouraging whole-family participation need more formalized emphasis and standardized support throughout U.S. Air Force and Army installations overseas. The adage "We recruit soldiers but we retain families" is used to attest the criticality of a healthy family relationship to the overall effectiveness and long-term retention likelihood of the military soldier for good reason. Military families are widely-regarded to be as important to national security as uniformed service members.

My recommendation is to develop a government-funded military family fitness program in order to directly address the physical and mental wellbeing of military families, and to significantly strengthen their social support network. In order to be effective and sustainable, while applicable across a broad range of installations, two additional GS-11 Health Educators need to be hired within Health and Wellness Centers supporting overseas Army and Air Force Installations. These individuals will be responsible for planning and implementing a family-oriented fitness program and to design an optimal framework for ability-group instruction (alternately and when cost effective, they can choose to outsource hiring of trainers). 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' scores and lessons learned online). Such a program will allow freedom of specification and execution within military installations, while encouraging friendly competition and insuring accountability, holding two GS-11 Health Educators responsible for annual quantifiable fitness improvements.

I am requesting a trial run of a Military Family Fitness program 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 depression, divorce, illicit drug use, gambling, and chronic health issues (including obesity-related conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, and several forms of cancer), and its success in significantly improving overall community fitness levels, will justify discussion concerning its implementation in domestic or smaller installations. 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 Fitness Specialists' total expenditure on trainers to under $50 per eligible client per year and restricting total equipment costs to under $10,000 per fitness facility).

The full FamFit proposal is posted online at http://militaryfamilyfitness.blogspot.com/ and explains in detail why the program is needed, and what it will accomplish. Thank you sincerely for your time and consideration of this proposal.

Respectfully,

Ginger Sladky