[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 181 (Thursday, November 15, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7045-S7046]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             RECOGNIZING THE UNIFORMED SERVICES UNIVERSITY

  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, today I wish to recognize the 
Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, USU, as the 
Nation's first ``National Stop the Bleed Campus.''
  USU is located in Bethesda, MD and is one of our Nation's greatest 
treasures. As our country's only Federal health sciences university, 
USU educates, trains, and prepares uniformed health professionals, 
scientists, and leaders to support the readiness of our Armed Forces. 
USU is a global leader in state-of-the-art research in traumatic brain 
injury, posttraumatic stress disorder, precision medicine, 
rehabilitation and prosthetics, emerging infectious diseases, tropical 
medicine, and cancer, and its researchers generate high-impact 
militarily relevant discoveries and products to protect the health of 
our Forces and strengthen the national health security of the United 
States.
  USU is leading efforts in a nation-wide ``Stop the Bleed'' campaign, 
launched by the White House on October 6, 2015. This initiative 
involves several agencies, Federal and private entities, public health 
groups, and medical societies working collaboratively to educate and 
empower our citizens on how to stop life-threatening hemorrhage after 
traumatic injuries, such as car crashes, acts of violence, and natural 
disasters. Today trauma is the leading cause of death in the U.S. for 
people between the ages of 1-40. Hemorrhaging, in particular, accounts 
for almost 40 percent of deaths in the first 24 hours after a traumatic 
injury.
  ``Stop the Bleed'' aims to teach our citizens how to save lives from 
major traumatic events, just as a bystander would know how to use CPR 
to save someone in cardiac arrest. Through this campaign, the goal is 
to ensure that the general public knows the ``Stop the Bleed'' phrase 
and logo and has access to effective personal and public bleeding 
control kits that will allow even an untrained person to effectively 
apply a tourniquet just by learning on the spot.
  ``Stop the Bleed'' directly translates important lessons learned on 
the battlefield to benefit the American public and is based on a decade 
of research by the U.S. military. As our country faced a record number 
of vascular trauma and extremity injuries from high-velocity gunshot 
wounds and explosive devices during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, 
the U.S. military began to quickly reassess and revamp its tactical 
combat casualty care. They began to equip troops with individual first 
aid kits containing tourniquets and newly-developed hemostatic 
dressings to control severe blood loss. Simultaneously, they revamped 
training to educate both our medical and nonmedical forces, emphasizing 
the importance of immediate recognition and control of blood loss with 
these newly designed tool kits. These efforts paid off. Military 
studies demonstrated that immediate control of severe blood loss, in 
fact, saved many lives on the battlefield.
  With this knowledge, the military joined forces with members of the 
Hartford Consensus, a committee formed in the wake of the tragic Sandy 
Hook school shooting. Together, they worked to push these vital lessons 
out to the public. That effort led to the White House's launching the 
``Stop the Bleed'' campaign.
  As part of this initiative, USU sent teams of its staff and students 
out into the community to educate the public on how to ``Stop the 
Bleed.'' Their researchers have published studies looking at the 
layperson's ability to apply tourniquets and measuring which tactics 
are most effective for teaching the public how to apply tourniquets. 
They are conducting a study looking at the usability of several types 
of dressing to control severe blood loss in the hope of determining 
which would be easiest for the lay person to apply. USU researchers 
have found that the layperson will know what to do to ``Stop the 
Bleed'' about 50 percent of the time with ``just-in-time'' training, 
learning on the spot. If they have just 15 minutes of web-based 
training, combined with ``just-in-time training,'' the success rate for 
applying tourniquets rises to 75 percent.
  USU researchers have taken the lead in this initiative and developed 
a mobile ``Stop the Bleed'' app for the public to use for education on 
how to stop severe blood loss and for emergency reference in case of a 
traumatic event that results in life-threatening bleeding. They have 
developed a website, https://stopthebleed.usuhs.edu, with information 
and resources aimed at bystander education and saving lives. In

[[Page S7046]]

addition, the university has installed ``Stop the Bleed'' kits 
throughout every floor on its campus, both in Bethesda and local 
satellite offices, and its regional offices in San Antonio, TX, and San 
Diego, CA. These kits contain tourniquets, instructions on how to apply 
them, and other lifesaving tools needed in an emergency.
  Because of their ongoing efforts to educate our Nation's citizens 
about this lifesaving initiative, I would like to recognize USU as our 
Nation's first ``National Stop the Bleed Campus,'' to encourage others 
across the country to follow in their footsteps and, ultimately, 
continue to improve national preparedness in response to traumatic 
events.
  Thank you.

                          ____________________