Serving Those Who Serve: A North American Study of Genetic Counselors' Awareness of Resources for Military Families.

Authors

Erica Sontheimer, Victoria Robertson, Austin Pagani, Cara Olsen, Megan E Trinkle-Tucker, Michael Bray, Miranda Ruben, Lydia Hellwig

Published in

Journal of genetic counseling. Volume 35. Issue 5. Pages e70301.

Abstract

Military families constitute a significant segment of the United States population and receive medical care domestically and internationally. Although existing resources address their unique needs, limited research has explored genetic counselors' awareness of such resources. To explore genetic counselor and genetic counseling student readiness to support active-duty service members (ADSMs) and their dependents, this cross-sectional study used a survey containing both quantitative items and open-ended questions focused on awareness of needs and knowledge of military-specific resources. The web-based survey, distributed primarily in North America, assessed counseling experience, familiarity with support services, perceived barriers to care, and attitudes toward improving resource access. Exploratory, uncorrected logistic regression estimated unadjusted and adjusted odds ratios for selected associations. Of the 99 participants who consented to the study, 76 respondents completed all study sections and were included in the analyses (76.8%). Respondents were predominantly female (89.5%), and most were 25-34 years old (51.3%). Among respondents, 61.8% had never received training to counsel military-affiliated patients. Nearly 20% reported being unsure if they had ever counseled this population, suggesting a potential risk of omitting relevant counseling elements or support resources that could benefit this group. Exploratory analysis suggested positive associations between greater experience counseling ADSMs and their dependents or personal experience with the Department of Defense (DoD), also known as the Department of War (DoW), and prior searches for military-specific resources and self-reported confidence in knowledge of military resources. Nearly all respondents (98.7%) indicated that a military-resource fact sheet would be helpful; 75.0% supported a conference session, 73.7% supported webinar-based training, and 72.4% supported the inclusion of military-specific content in genetic counseling curricula. These findings support the development of military-specific educational resources and future evaluation of strategies, including experiential learning, to increase genetic counselors' familiarity with military-specific resources.

PMID:
42888827
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 17 Oct 2026.

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