Founded during the Civil War as the Army Medical Museum, the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP) amassed the world's largest collection of human pathologic specimens and was considered a premier consultation, education, and research facility by the end of the 20th century. Samples from the AFIP were instrumental in helping to solve public health mysteries, such as the sequence of the genome of the 1918 influenza virus that killed more than 40 million people worldwide. In 2005, the federal Base Realignment and Closure Commission recommended that the AFIP be closed, and its biorepository was transferred to the newly created Joint Pathology Center. During the transition, the Department of Defense asked the IOM to provide advice on operating the biorepository, managing its collection, and determining appropriate future use of specimens for consultation, education, and research. Future Uses of the Department of Defense Joint Pathology Center Biorepository, the IOM proposes a series of protocols, standards, safeguards, and guidelines that could help to ensure that this national treasure continues to be available to researchers in the years to come, while protecting the privacy of the people who provided the materials and maintaining the security of their personal information.

More than 3.7 million U.S. service members have participated in operations taking place in the Southwest Asia Theater of Military Operations since 1990. These operations include the 1990-1991 Persian Gulf War, a post-war stabilization period spanning 1992 through September 2001, and the campaigns undertaken in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks. Deployment to Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Gulf of Aden, Gulf of Oman, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Afghanistan exposed service members to a number of airborne hazards, including oil-well fire smoke, emissions from open burn pits, dust and sand suspended in the air, and exhaust from diesel vehicles. The effects of these were compounded by stressors like excessive heat and noise that are inevitable attributes of service in a combat environment. Respiratory Health Effects of Airborne Hazards Exposures in the Southwest Asia Theater of Military Operations reviews the scientific evidence regarding respiratory health outcomes in veterans of the Southwest Asia conflicts and identifies research that could feasibly be conducted to address outstanding questions and generate answers, newly emerging technologies that could aid in these efforts, and organizations that the Veterans Administration might partner with to accomplish this work.