Capability-Based Blueprinting: Lessons Learned in Scaling Community-Based Health and Performance Needs Assessments

Enhancing unit-mission effectiveness is a priority and challenge in the U.S. military, especially in a landscape of wide-ranging mission capabilities and diverse career-field health and performance needs. The first step to addressing mission-relevant health and performance needs is identifying those needs within context. Capability-based blueprinting (CBB) is designed to address mission-relevant health and performance needs by using a "bottom up" approach, beginning with career-field and unit perspectives at an installation level. Despite the value of a capability-based blueprint to a specific installation, it is unclear if a CBB with a career field at a specific installation provides actionable insight for health and performance personnel and career-field leadership that is transferable to members of the same career field at other installations with different mission requirements. CBB was conducted in collaboration with Weapons Armament System communities at three installations to address this question. Findings across three capability-based blueprints articulate the link between career-field requirements, working environments, and career-field-specific health and performance considerations. Gaining an understanding of career-field-critical tasks and the associated health and performance priorities at one installation can provide some transferable knowledge for health and performance assets at other installations, such as physical, ergonomic, and nutritional demands. Continual learning is still necessary, however, since considerations, such as team dynamics and organizational climate, are likely siteand time-specific and should be explored at each site. Finally, it is important to understand that health and performance domains (e.g., physical, psychological) interact with and impact each other, ultimately shaping health and performance demands and, therefore, readiness.