Soldier resilience on the battlefield starts with maintaining health and fitness at home, a panel of experts said.

“Soldiers still need [Holistic Health and Fitness] today, and they will need it 10 years from now. Our soldiers need to adapt, they need to be able to be resilient in different battlefields at home before deployment,” Spencer Posey, an Army veteran and lead scientist in human performance at Booz Allen Hamilton, said during a Hot Topic on Army Holistic Health and Fitness hosted by the Association of the U.S. Army. “I think this is the most important investment the Army has ever done.”

The Army’s Holistic Health and Fitness program, which was established in October 2020, focuses on maintaining soldiers’ well-being across five areas—physical, mental, nutritional, spiritual and sleep—to enable soldier and unit readiness. It also puts teams of nutritionists, physical therapists, strength and conditioning coaches and other experts with Army units.

Physical and mental well-being are inextricable, said Keita Franklin, chief of behavioral health at Leidos, citing her observations from reports of service members and veterans who died by suicide.

“The troops were in the hospital setting in the days leading up to their death for some sort of a physical issue, and they were willing to perhaps go in for broken ankles or headaches,” she said. “There’s some kind of hesitancy to seek out other types of care, … but if they will go in for a physical issue, we know that it's also impacting their emotional issues. … They go together so closely.”

The Army needs a proactive approach to wellness, said retired Sgt. Maj. of the Army Michael Grinston, who now leads Army Emergency Relief.

“When I looked at what we were doing with all of the [soldier] suicides, when soldiers weren’t getting enough sleep, you throw in some alcohol, you throw in somebody yelling at them, they can’t keep up with a run [and] they go home and their wife leaves them,” he said. “We never actually went upstream enough to find out what started it.”

Ensuring soldier health demands a comprehensive solution, Franklin said.

“When people are doing their physical work, and they're doing it together, and they're getting after the connection and social support and the peer support that the Army is so known for, … we know that is incredible,” she said. “If they are engaged in a life worth living, and they're activating on all of the cylinders, sometimes all at once, ... we know that we're doing our best work.”

It’s “never … too late to start implementing lifestyle changes,” Posey said. “I think that as an institution in the Army, we should start it from day one, and it should end … as an institution when someone leaves the service,” he said.