Community Resource Guides
Where can you turn to find a place to go for a swim while at Fort Meade, Maryland, or to get help dealing with separation from family and friends while deployed to Camp Red Cloud, Korea? Thanks to the Army’s online Community Resource Guides (CRGs), finding the 25-meter indoor pool at the Gaffney Fitness Center on Fort Meade or the Military and Family Life Counseling Center at Camp Red Cloud, Korea, is as easy as the click of a link.
Established by the Army Public Health, CRGs serve to make vital information from critical health and resiliency resources readily available to Soldiers and their Family members. CRGs were developed as part of an initiative to facilitate resiliency and increase Soldier and Family member access to healthy lifestyle options. To date, 48 Army installations around the world have developed CRGs. Housed together on one convenient website, the CRGs combine to create a directory of programs and services that span the globe.
CRGs also serve to foster awareness among installation leaders and service providers relating to the services their communities may be requesting. Feedback through the CRG website may also reveal services that are lacking and provide insight as to how they can be improved upon.
The CRG website and mobile app are a one-stop shop for information on medical, mission and garrison activities, benefits and providers. The directory stores information for more than 7,500 resources from across the Army. Services can be searched based on the installation location or on the service type. The guides include a list of programs that support each particular installation and are organized alphabetically, by topic area and by agency. Available resources cover 13 subject areas. Common service categories include Behavioral Health, Education, Families and Healthy Living.
The CRGs exist to serve and support the resiliency needs of Soldiers and their Families. Operating with this in mind, the Army has continued improvements planned for the CRG website and mobile site. Early in fiscal year 2019, CRG website user behaviors were analyzed by Army researchers. Results from the analysis, including search function patterns, will be provided to installation leaders as a means for tracking the resources most in demand by Soldiers and their Families. Additional resources will be brought to bear to promote the top identified resources. CRG improvement efforts are also noted to include an interactive map for locating services, links to related search fields and integration with existing Army information systems.
Explore the resources available on the CRG website by visiting: CRG.amedd.army.mil.
by Staff Writer Matthew Liptak
