Newswise — Col. (Dr.) Stephen J. Cozza, U.S. Army (Ret.), professor of Psychiatry for the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU), together with Gary E. Knell, president and CEO of Sesame Workshop, and Loree K. Sutton, Col. (promotable), MC, USA, director of the Defense Center of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury and special assistant to the assistant secretary of defense (Health Affairs) for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury recently announced the launch of "Talk, Listen, Connect: Deployments, Homecomings, Changes," the second phase of the Sesame Workshop's military outreach program launched initially in 2006.
With its second phase, the Sesame Workshop aims to reduce children's anxiety during homecomings from multiple deployments, as well as help parents with ways to cope with multiple deployments and help young children gain an age-appropriate understanding of a parent's injury by including them and the entire family in the rehabilitation process.
Dr. Cozza, the associate director of USU's Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress, Child and Family Programs, is a member of the project advisory board for the Sesame Workshop, the non-profit educational organization behind Sesame Street. Dr. Cozza, along with a number of military family groups and subject matter experts, participated in the development of a Sesame Street Muppet production that addresses issues related to separation, fear, family transition, and reintegration of military service members following a deployment.
"Through their generous work in creating Talk, Listen, Connect, Sesame Workshop helps our many young military children affected by deployment and the changes that can occur in their parents as a result of combat exposure. Talk, Listen, Connect provides an opportunity for children to cope with these challenges in positive and reassuring ways," said Cozza. "These much needed materials offer wonderful strategies that can help military families with young children and foster meaningful connections between family members, friends, and communities in their everyday lives."
Located on the grounds of Bethesda's National Naval Medical Center and across from the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., USU is the nation's federal school of medicine and graduate school of nursing. Students are active-duty uniformed officers in the Army, Navy, Air Force and Public Health Service, who are being educated to deal with wartime casualties, national disasters, emerging infectious diseases, and other public health emergencies.
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