Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #110006

J. Blake Turner, PhD, Department of Sociomedical Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, 100 Haven Ave., Tower III, #19E, New York, NY 10032, 212-795-0211, jbt12@columbia.edu

This paper examines racial and ethnic differences in the probability of assignment to combat roles among male service personnel sent to Vietnam during the war, and the long-term consequences of these assignment patterns for the epidemiology of PTSD. Using data from the National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study, or NVVRS (Kulka et al. 1991), we find that minorities (and particularly African-Americans) were substantially more likely than non-Latino whites to be assigned to a combat or dangerous combat support Military Occupational Specialty (MOS). Minorities (and particularly African-Americans) were also substantially more likely to be assigned to a high combat unit. These differences remain when branch of service (Army, Marines, Navy, Air Force), mode of entry (drafted vs. enlisted), and Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT) scores are controlled. Given how strongly both MOS and unit are related to the probability of war-related PTSD (Dohrenwend et al. 2003), this apparently discriminatory assignment process may be substantially responsible for the minority elevations in PTSD rates reported by the original NVVRS investigators.

The remainder of the paper assesses the consequences of differential selection into combat roles for the prevalence and distribution of PTSD by standardizing race-ethnic specific rates on MOS and unit assignment patterns. Implications of the findings for the patterns of PTSD to emerge in returning veterans of the occupation in Iraq are also discussed.

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