Timely, Relevant, Comprehensive and Actionable Health Surveillance
The Armed Forces Health Surveillance Division is the central epidemiologic health resource for the U.S. military. We conduct medical surveillance to protect those who serve our nation in uniform and allies who are critical to our national security interests. AFHSD is a division within DHA’s Public Health.
AFHSD is organized into three branches: Epidemiology and Analysis, Global Emerging Infections Surveillance, and Integrated Biosurveillance. We place emphasis on defense management tools through our Information Technology Support section.
We coordinate and leverage health surveillance resources across the DOD Public Health enterprise to include the Defense Centers for Public Health – Aberdeen (Army), Defense Centers for Public Health – Dayton (Air Force), and Defense Centers for Public Health – Portsmouth (Navy and Marine Corps) for early warning, health threat assessments and force health protection.
Learn how our health information analysis supports worldwide disease surveillance and public health activities to improve the U.S. military’s Force Health Protection mission.
Purpose
To protect the total force through actionable health surveillance information and support.
Goals
- Flexible, responsive, and predicative to our customers.
- Early warning capability of global health threats.
- Inform risk management decisions across the health surveillance enterprise.
Explore our health surveillance resources to learn how to utilize our data applications, systems and the ways our health information analysis supports worldwide disease surveillance and public health activities to improve the U.S. military's Force Health Protection program.
The Medical Surveillance Monthly Report is AFHSD's flagship publication. The monthly peer-reviewed journal provides evidence-based estimates of the incidence, distribution, impact, and trends of health-related conditions among service members. Additionally, the MSMR focuses one issue per year on the absolute and relative morbidity burden attributable to various illnesses and injuries among service members and beneficiaries.
View Current Report View Archived ReportsArchived Reports
The Health Surveillance Explorer is a dynamic CAC-enabled mapping application that allows the Geographic Combatant Commands to identify global health threats and disease outbreaks in near-real time. It provides timely, relevant and actionable health surveillance information to military leaders around the globe. The HSE makes it more efficient and effective to assemble surveillance data.
Launch HSE
The Proposal Management Information System program is a web-based application used to facilitate program management at the AFHSD's Global Emerging Infections Surveillance section. Investigators in the GEIS partner network submit proposals for funding consideration and GEIS operations staff monitors the progress of those projects.
Go to ProMIS
The Defense Medical Epidemiology Database provides worldwide access to de-identified data contained in the Defense Medical Surveillance System. Through this user-friendly interface, authorized users can create customized queries of disease and injury rates in active duty populations.
Go to DMED
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The Defense Health Agency-Public Health Armed Forces Health Surveillance Division’s Global Emerging Infections Surveillance program partnered with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the release of a global emerging infectious disease supplement for the November 2024 issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases.
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TBICoE is the Defense Department’s office of responsibility for tracking traumatic brain injury data in the U.S. military. Here you’ll find data on the number of active-duty service members—anywhere U.S. forces are located—with a first-time TBI diagnosis in the calendar year 2022. The data is also broken down by each branch of the armed services.
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Public health preparedness and response is a critical area of focus as Defense Public Health transitions some of the military component public health functions to the Defense Health Agency. This includes all-hazard biosurveillance and public health emergency management, or PHEM.
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The Armed Forces Health Surveillance Division’s Global Emerging Infections Surveillance branch hosted its first Next-Generation Sequencing Summit in Silver Spring, Maryland. Attendees included representatives from the GEIS network of global partner laboratories and other U.S. government agencies. AFHSD is a division of Defense Health Agency Public Health.
Report
Aug 1, 2023
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The August 2023 MSMR provides the most recent data from the active surveillance program for acute respiratory disease and Group A Beta-Hemolytic Streptococcus among U.S. Army basic trainees; then summarizes the case report of an extensively resistant E. coli in a returning traveler at Hawai'i's Tripler Army Medical Center; followed by a Surveillance ...
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This continuation of the June issue, which published the annual quantification of health care provided by the Military Health System, continues with the impacts of various illnesses and injuries in 2022 among deployed service members; medical evacuations out of theaters of military operation; health care provision to non-service member MHS ...
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The May 2023 MSMR reintroduces a monthly reportable medical event (RME) summary for the active component and MHS beneficiaries; then features a review of enhanced mpox outbreak case detection among MHS beneficiaries through ESSENCE (Electronic Surveillance System for the Early Notification of Community-based Epidemics); followed by a report on ...
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April 2023 of MSMR, the Medical Surveillance Monthly Report
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March 2023 issue of MSMR, the Medical Surveillance Monthly Report
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Feb 1, 2023
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This issue of the peer-reviewed monthly journal published by the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Division (AFHSD) features the articles: Changing of the Guard: MSMR’s Second Editor-in-Chief Retires; Brief Report: Hospitalizations Among Active Duty Members of the U.S. Coast Guard, Fiscal Year 2021; Historical Perspective: The Critical Role of Disease ...
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A reportable event may represent an inherent, significant threat to public health and military operation. These events have the potential to affect large numbers of people, to be widely transmitted within a population, to have severe/life threatening clinical manifestations, and to disrupt military training and deployment. Timely, accurate reporting ...
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This annual report provides a summary of the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Division's accomplishments during 2021.
Policy
Dec 11, 2019
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The Armed Forces Reportable Medical Events Guidelines and Case Definitions (RME Guidelines) standardize reporting and tracking of disease and other conditions of public health and military importance. Timely reporting permits earlier recognition of public health events and interventions to protect the health of the force.
- Identification #: N/A
- Type: Memorandum
Fact Sheet
May 12, 2017
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This fact sheet provides a system overview of the Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED). DMED is a web-based tool to remotely query de-identified active component personnel and medical event data contained within the Defense Medical Surveillance System (DMSS). Learn about the newly released version of DMED and its key features in this document.
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Last Updated: September 11, 2025