While much has been written about the role of caregiving for the elderly and chronically ill and for children with special needs, little is known about "military caregivers"-the population of those who care for wounded, ill, and injured military personnel and veterans. These caregivers play an essential role in caring for injured or wounded service members and veterans. This enables those for whom they are caring to live better quality lives, and can result in faster and improved rehabilitation and recovery. Yet playing this role can impose a substantial physical, emotional, and financial toll on caregivers. This article distills a longer report, Hidden Heroes: America's Military Caregivers, which describes the results of a study designed to describe the magnitude of military caregiving in the United States today, as well as to identify gaps in the array of programs, policies, and initiatives designed to support military caregivers. Improving military caregivers' well-being and ensuring their continued ability to provide care will require multifaceted approaches to reducing the current burdens caregiving may impose, and bolstering their ability to serve as caregivers more effectively. Given the systematic differences among military caregiver groups, it is also important that tailored approaches meet the unique needs and characteristics of post-9/11 caregivers.

A RAND study found very few community civilian providers surveyed met key thresholds for military cultural competency and use of evidence-based care, indicating few are ready overall to assist service members, veterans, and their families.

Congress can support military caregivers in many ways: reconsider eligibility requirements for caregiver support programs, ensure health care coverage for military caregivers, promote the integration and coordination of programs and services, and fully fund the Lifespan Respite Care Act.

Health care providers can support military caregivers in many ways: acknowledge them as part of the health care team, routinely assess caregiving needs and the presence of caregiver support, integrate them into health providers' culture, and adopt appropriate caregiver documentation requirements to facilitate their engagement.

The business community can support military caregivers in many ways: raise awareness by promoting messages that support military caregivers, offer support services, work with employees to accomodate their caregiver duties, and hire caregivers.

Ensuring that veterans and their families have access to high-quality mental health care is a national priority, and civilian providers are an increasingly important part of the workforce addressing veterans' mental health needs. RAND conducted a survey of civilian mental health providers to gather information about their competency with military and veteran culture and their experience treating posttraumatic stress disorder and depression.

This presentation slide deck offers key facts and statistics from the RAND Military Caregivers Study. The results of the study are fully documented in Ramchand R, Tanielian T, et al., Hidden Heroes: America's Military Caregivers, RAND Corporation, 2014. These charts and figures are offered in both Microsoft PowerPoint and .PDF formats for ease of insertion into other presentation slide decks.

M ore than 2.5 million U.S. service members have been deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001. Their wartime experiences have led to a sharp increase in the number of veterans living with disabilities. Many veterans of these and earlier conflicts rely for their day-to-day needs on care provided by family or friends. These informal caregivers, whom we term military caregivers, provide a range of indispensable services, saving the nation millions of dollars in health and long-term care costs. RAND researchers estimate that there are 5.5 million military caregivers in the United States today. To improve the nation’s understanding of this little-studied group and the programs and services available to them, we set out to describe who these caregivers are, the burden of care that they bear, their support needs, the constellation of programs and other resources that exist to support them, and areas where additional support is needed. Who are they? And who is supporting them? Military Caregivers BRIEF