Coppola: A Pediatric Surgeon in Iraq

Hi! Happy Sunday. As I sit lazily on my couch (don't worry, we have our 4mi training run coming up, and it is a beautiful day in Central PA!) I took literally 20 seconds to send a message of thanks to a military family via the USO.

You can do it too! Just go to Joining Forces:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/joiningforces/message

and take a moment to write a message of thanks, click submit and know that you will be making a personal contact with a family that is living and breathing protection of our great country through service and sacrifice every day.

We will also be pledging our service hours, starting with our marathon run to benefit Fisher House. I was able to search by zip code and find local events.

I found Joining Forces through my professional organization, the American College of Surgeons. As a group we will be doing our part to strive to provide enough medical resources to care for war veterans returning with amputations, traumatic brain injuries, and PTSD. There are opportunities for both people as individuals and organizations to join this national support of our military families.

You can also browse around the site to find other initiatives to help veterans. For example, just signed into law is legislation protecting veterans from being bilked of their GI Bill education benefits by fly-by-night diploma mills. I have over 15 years of higher education and still it is tough for me to discern the charlatans from the legitimate institutions of higher education! (Maybe that is more of a comment on me.) It took some research, and I eventually chose Norwich University, and was extremely pleased.

http://www.norwich.edu

Now it's time to get the sneakers on!