Photo By Jean Graves | Staff Sgt. Savana Neves, an operating room specialist at Bayne-Jones Army Community...... read more read more
FORT JOHNSON, La. — What if doctors could predict the future? For one doctor at Bayne-Jones Army Community Hospital, that is his goal.
Maj. Caleb Johnson, chief of rehabilitation services, is leading a pilot program to reduce the Army’s leading cause of lost workdays—overuse injuries. The initiative, integrated into Soldier in-processing and orientation at the Joint Readiness Training Center and Fort Johnson, focuses on identifying risks early and preventing injuries before they happen so they don’t impact readiness.
Johnson, a member of the physical health working group, said the study supports the Senior Mission Commander’s Ready and Resilient Council by promoting a holistic and multidisciplinary approach to health.
“We're working to identify data that reveals which individuals are at a higher risk for injury,” he said. "Our pilot examines the 11 risk factors for injuries identified by Dr. Deydre Teyhen in her 2020 study on musculoskeletal injuries in warrior athletes."
Johnson's team is screening for factors such as age, sex, past injuries, perceived recovery from injury, days on limited duty, pain during movement, ankle flexibility, mobility, and 2-mile run time. Targeted prevention strategies currently focus on educating Soldiers who are more prone to injury based on the surveillance.
“We hope to gather enough data to potentially identify Soldiers who are prone to injuries,” Maj. Johnson said. “Once the study is complete, we will need to assess the potential number of patients this screening would generate and the impact it would have on access to care if implemented year-round.”
Lt. Col. Ralph Salazar, the JRTC and Fort Johnson CR2 integrator, discussed how Johnson’s physical injury prevention pilot supports the installation commander’s readiness goals.
“To maintain organizational momentum and allow our warfighters to focus on mission tasks, it's crucial for the medical community to assist in injury prevention,” he said. “We have highly skilled prevention specialists who can mitigate productivity loss due to injury. The only thing better than rehabbing quickly and returning to duty is not getting injured in the first place.”
Salazar noted that physical health is one of the four pillars of the CR2 program.
“The overall goal of the CR2 Council is to minimize the harmful effects of corrosive behaviors across Fort Johnson,” he said. “When a Soldier cannot perform at their best, it negatively impacts the unit's ability to accomplish mission-essential tasks. Along with the spiritual, social, and emotional working groups, the physical health working group monitors Soldiers' physical readiness and makes recommendations for course corrections when trends are not conducive to preserving the fighting force. Without this analysis, we wouldn't have true measures of effectiveness or performance, making it impossible to properly allocate physical health resources on post.”
Command Sgt. Maj. Larry D. White II, senior enlisted advisor for BJACH, chairs the CR2 Physical Health Working Group.
“The goal of our working group is to develop strategies that promote the physical health and readiness of Soldiers stationed at Fort Johnson,” he said. “As a military medical professional for nearly 28 years, I have seen firsthand how individual injuries and illnesses can take Soldiers out of the fight for an extended period and negatively impact a unit’s ability to perform their mission.”
White said Johnson and his team are using surveillance to identify risks and ultimately prevent certain injuries through command-focused education and holistic health and fitness programs.
| Date Taken: | 03.11.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 03.11.2025 10:42 |
| Story ID: | 492483 |
| Location: | FORT JOHNSON, LOUISIANA, US |
| Web Views: | 162 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
This work, Innovative Pilot Program Aims to Prevent Soldier Injuries at Fort Johnson, by Jean Graves, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
Physical Therapy
