Low Back and Neck pain are the costliest and most disabling health conditions in the world and are a pervasive and persistent challenge across the U.S. Armed Forces. Spine disorders affect up to 19.5% of military service members annually and represent the leading cause of disability discharge, medical evacuation, and limited duty days (over 25 million each year), severely undermining operational readiness. In the Air Force, operationally critical service members such as pilots, air crew, pararescue jumpers, security forces, and maintenance personnel who are exposed to highly repetitive and often, highly physical loading are especially vulnerable. Due to the often chronic and debilitating nature of low back and neck pain, prevalence of these health conditions in veterans is in excess of 40% and is strongly linked with depression, long-term disability, compromised quality of life, and increased opioid usage. The etiology of neck and back pain, disorders, and injuries is complex and multifactorial, driven by physical, psychological, and social (biopsychosocial) determinants that shape risk of onset, progression, and recovery. These biopsychosocial interactions produce heterogeneous clinical presentations, complicating prevention, diagnosis, and management. Additionally, risk factors that uniquely impact military service members such as combat training under heavy loads, prolonged and frequent use of head-mounted gear and body armor, extended static postures, high G-force exposure, poor equipment ergonomics, whole-body vibration, extreme psychosocial stress, sleep deprivation, as well as cultural norms and advancement incentives that can hinder reporting. This combination of factors can create a perfect storm for complex, disabling, and long-lasting (chronic) low back and neck disorders. Given the complex nature of these disorders, the current best practice of relying on subjective, self-reported pain and function to guide decisions is insufficient. To better prevent low back and neck pain and intervene early when these disorders are most manageable, medical and operational support teams need objective, reliable, and actionable spine health metrics to help inform training, injury prevention, and clinical treatment decision making. Since the commercial marketplace currently lacks solutions in this space, this topic aims to help develop and transition to market a system that empowers service members in both operational and medical units to rapidly assess multiple biopsychosocial elements of low back and neck impairment including an objective assessment of functional impairment. Development of such a solution that can be deployed at scale will be critical to help decrease the economic and operational burden of low back and neck pain on the USAF and DoW and ultimately improve operational readiness, mission performance, and patient outcomes.
No documents are available for this record yet.