The Defense Department on Monday announced the Healthy Base Initiative, a one-year demonstration project to gauge the ability of a test set of DOD installations to create environments that can sustain healthy lifestyles. “Our vision of success is an installation that provides an environment that makes healthy choices the easy choice and a place that encourages and promotes nutrition, an active lifestyle, and tobacco-free living,” said Charles Milam, acting deputy assistant secretary of defense for military community and family policy, during a March 18 media roundtable. The project begins in mid-June at 13 Pentagon installations worldwide. Among the pilot sites are these Air Force locations: March ARB, Calif.; Mountain Home AFB, Idaho; JB Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii; and Yokota AB, Japan. Milam said HBI will be “cost neutral” as the aim is not to build new programs, but to invest time into reviewing existing infrastructures and initiatives to see what’s most successful. HBI is a component of Operation Live Well, a Pentagon initiative to increase the health and wellness of US military personnel, their family members, and DOD civilians.
The Air Force is on track to reach its annual goal of graduating 1,500 new pilots that had proved elusive to this point, one year after the service launched a sweeping overhaul of its undergraduate pilot training program, Air Education and Training Command said Sept. 14.
