| In December 1997, the Department of Veterans'
Affairs (DVA) and the Department of Defense (DoD)
asked the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to convene a
group of experts to address the issue of measuring
the health of Persian Gulf War (PGW) veterans. The
purposes of this study are to (1) identify
questions regarding the evaluation of the health
status of active-duty troops and veterans deployed
to the Persian Gulf, (2) identify issues to be
addressed in the development of study designs and
methods that would be used to answer such
questions, and (3) develop a research design(s)
and methods that could be used to address such
questions. A committee of individuals with
expertise in outcomes analysis, study design,
research methods, statistics, epidemiology, health
status measurement, military databases, clinical
medicine, and PGW veterans' health was convened to
conduct the study.
The committee organized a workshop on May 7,
1998, the purpose of which was to provide its
members with background information on the health
concerns of PGW veterans and an overview of
research on this topic as a starting point for
committee deliberations. This report of the
presentations and discussion at that invitational
workshop is being prepared in response to a
request from the study sponsors, DVA and DoD. The
report is strictly a summary of the workshop. It
does not contain committee findings or
recommendations because the committee has not yet
conducted a systematic evaluation of the
information presented by the speakers, nor has it
reviewed the additional research conducted but not
presented during the workshop.
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