Each spring I teach a seminar for the VCU Master in Public Health program title Contemporary Issues and Controversies in Public Health. We cover issues such as obesity, poverty and health, gun control, down low behavior, and overtreatment in medicine. I recently came across a new (to me) public health controversy: military recruitment of high school students and its public health implications.
In a paper published in the American Journal of Public Health, the authors raise a seemingly valid concern about the effects of military recruitment in high schools. They chronicle the efforts to limit military recruitment of students by a PTA organization in Seattle, highlighting the aggressive measures used by recruiters, likened to predatory grooming, to gain access to students in high schools. Recruitment efforts are particularly aggressive in rural and low income urban areas. The authors cite several potential public health impacts such as studies demonstrating the highest rates of all mental health disorders, including alcohol abuse, anxiety syndromes, depression, and posttraumatic stress disorder among the youngest cohort of military recruits, those aged 17-24 years. Youngest military recruits also have the highest rates of suicide and self inflicted injuries.
The Bush Administration’s No Child Left Behind Act, Section 9528,requires public schools to give military recruiters access to students at school and access to student’s contact information.
I remember recruiters in my high school in the mid-late 1980s. My Dad, a pediatrician, would half-jokingly provide me some wise advice when learning of their presence - "don't sign anything."
