The entrance sign to Fort Carson, Colo., on May 16, 2025. (Rose L. Thayer/Stars and Stripes)
FORT CARSON, Colo. — Leaders of the 4th Infantry Division wanted to find a way to reach troubled soldiers before they began thinking about hurting themselves.
Soldiers reporting thoughts of suicide and needing immediate treatment made up 30% of all serious incident reports at the base. So, division leaders decided to implement a program to catch problems that soldiers were facing before they swelled beyond control — and then used data tracking software that they developed in-house. They quickly saw results.
They cut their serious incident reports in half in about six months among those soldiers who participated in the pilot program.
It began in early 2024 by offering questionnaires to some soldiers entering Fort Carson to determine whether they needed more support to acclimate to their new environment.
“We determined it might be from the stresses of [moving], because when you move from one place to another place, or if you’re a first-time soldier, you don’t have that structure, you don’t have that understanding of what the Army is like,” said Maj. Lam “Beau” Nguyen, an operations research and systems analyst officer with the division.
After seeing reports cut in half, the division fast-tracked the program’s implementation to all new soldiers within 10 months, he said.
Nguyen is one of three system analysts for the division who developed the data-crunching software that easily allowed them to track the progress of the pilot program and allow each unit to see quickly a timeline of what types of serious incidents are still occurring and predict when a spike could happen. This would help them try to prevent problems before they start.
A serious incident report is a specific form that commanders fill out when something occurs that could affect the unit, personnel or the mission. It is sent up through the soldiers’ chain of command.
All the data used already existed. Nguyen’s team just developed a way that made it easier to read and access, he said.
“It’s a powerful way for [commanders] to say, ‘My policies are working’ or ‘My policies aren’t working,’” Nguyen said last month during a presentation of the system.
The software’s appearance and navigation is slightly “gamified” to mirror a “Call of Duty”-style interface, Nguyen said. Making it look like the popular video game resonates with users better, he said.
The software application can line up statistics of serious incident reports with activities of the unit, such as deployments, new policies or protocols to see whether there was an effect on the conduct of soldiers.
“So, whatever else they did, we could show them that it’s helped decrease their [reports] over the course of the year,” Nguyen said.
Maj. Gen. Windsor “Shane” Buzza, chief of staff for Army Forces Command, the division’s higher headquarters, said he recently visited Fort Carson and was “highly impressed with the talent, skill and innovation.”
“These innovative 4th Infantry Division soldiers are fusing the best of human intuition with important statistics to provide vital analysis and predictions,” he said in a statement about the work. “The automated tool generates a written report summary, offers a data dashboard view, and allows commanders to better address their units’ needs for services, address safety trends and anticipate possible future concerns.”
For the actual screenings, soldiers answer a questionnaire during welcome briefings for troops who just arrived. This helps identify any stressors in the soldier’s life that could be improved through available on-post resources, such as financial counseling, family or parenting support or traditional behavioral health services, Nguyen said.
By using a control group that did not receive the screenings, the division saw with those who did get screened, one in 130 soldiers would have a serious incident report related to thoughts of suicide. Roughly one in 60 soldiers without the screenings had reports of suicidal thoughts. That statistic does not include those who attempted to harm themselves.
“It was about twice the risk,” Nguyen said.
For all other types of serious incidents — such as drunken driving, domestic violence, other criminal activity or serious injuries — the risk for those with the screening was one in 60 versus one in 26, he said.
After they presented the results to the base hospital, officials agreed the program appeared to help and, in October, began dedicating behavioral health care teams to screen all newly arrived soldiers.
Nguyen and his team are now working on an article about the results to present across the Army.
The division analysts also created an application to make it easier for commanders to submit serious incident reports and track their movement up the chain of command — reducing the amount of time that they take away from the mission. It automates a previously hourslong email process, said Maj. Daniel Martinez, another division analyst.
“We’ve taken on the mindset of, if we can save soldiers’ [work] hours on a mundane process and we can streamline that and automate that, it gives them time back to do training and to focus on caring for soldiers,” he said. “It also standardizes it and gives us access to the data that can then inform decisions.”
Forces Command, which gets hundreds of serious incident reports from the more than 750,000 soldiers in its command, has chosen to implement the application across all its units and bases, Buzza said.
“This tool will ‘digitize’ reporting of key information so commanders can gain better understanding of the root causes and trends behind the data in these daily reports,” he said. “We expect this tool to improve the safety and wellbeing of our soldiers, families and employees.”
