JOINT BASE MYER-HENDERSON HALL, Va. - Army officials are encouraging Soldiers’ spouses to take the Global Assessment Tool (GAT 2.0), a self-assessment tool for determining one’s levels of fitness, in a push from now through October.
The Army’s Comprehensive Soldier and Family Fitness (CSF2) program is leading the charge in promoting the tool, which gives users scores on their levels of family, social, physical, emotional and spiritual fitness.
GAT 2.0 tells users their biological age compared to their calendar age based on the answers to the survey and also gives them an analysis of how they’re doing in the Performance Triad – sleep, activity and nutrition.
All of the answers to the survey are completely confidential. In order for the tool to generate the most helpful and useful suggestions for lifestyle improvement, GAT instructions urge users to be completely honest when answering the questions. Soldiers are required to take the GAT 2.0 once a year, but spouses will be able to take a version tailored specifically for them.
“A key part of creating a more ready and resilient Army is ensuring our families have the same tools and resources as our Soldiers,” said Col. Kenneth Riddle, CSF2 director, in a press release.
Star Demery, executive officer for Headquarters Command Battalion, Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall, has served as an Army reservist for 17 years and is very familiar with the GAT 2.0 tool. As a medical services officer and the former executive administrative officer in Headquarters Department of the Army’s Strategy, Plans and Policy directorate, where the tool originated, Demery has seen its uses and benefits.
“I believe in it – I like the thought and the theory and principals behind it,” she said in an interview with the Pentagram.
Demery said GAT 2.0 works as both a self-awareness tool and as a starting point for making changes in a Soldier’s or spouse’s life, should they choose to take the tool’s suggestions.
“For individuals, it’s kind of a compass-check,” she said. “You just kind of stop and take a minute and ascertain where you’re at on different levels … and then you can use their suggestions and their tools to improve in areas where maybe you aren’t as strong as you want to be.”
Stefanie Pidgeon, a Comprehensive Soldier and Family Fitness program spokesperson, says the push for spouses to use the online tool stems from an Army-wide effort to strengthen individual Soldier resiliency and readiness via self-evaluation.
“Giving the Soldier and their spouse a common language from which they can communicate about their emotional and psychological fitness will hopefully strengthen their relationship, which will translate to a more ready and resilient Soldier, ready and resilient units, and a ready and resilient Army,” she said.
According to Demery, if users don’t want to follow GAT’s suggestions, they at least have the knowledge and self-awareness to employ their own methods.
A Soldier’s family helps them perform their duties to the best of their ability, so it only makes sense that family fitness should a focus of the Army, she said.
“If you don’t have that support from your family, it’s going to make it all the harder for us to do our jobs effectively and competently,” she said. “To the extent that the military can, why not make sure that the spouses are okay, too?”
There is a version of GAT 2.0 for family members available to Army spouses registered in the Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System (DEERS). GAT 2.0 can be accessed at armyfit.army.mil.
Users can log into the tool either with a common access card (CAC) or they can self-register with a user name and password. The latter option relies on authentication with DEERS.
Users should have current height, weight, blood pressure and cholesterol information before registering.
For more information on GAT 2.0, visit csf2.army.mil.
| Date Taken: | 08.14.2014 |
| Date Posted: | 08.14.2014 15:12 |
| Story ID: | 139341 |
| Location: | JOINT BASE MYER-HENDERSON HALL, VIRGINIA, US |
| Web Views: | 123 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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