Military Health System’s Around the MHS video, released on Oct. 21, 2026, opens with the seemingly unlikely pairing of college sports and the Department of War. The video’s news peg was a September meeting on a CARE-SALTOS (Concussion Assessment, Research and Education – Service Academy Longitudinal Mild TBI Outcomes Study) that will follow participants for up to 10 years.

This partnership, though, is over a decade old, begun when the NCAA and the Department of Defense announced a $30 million Grand Alliance at a White House concussion summit in 2014. NCAA chief medical officer Brian Hainline described athletes and service members alike as “young, ambitious, bright risk takers.”

The alliance funded the $7 million launch of the Mind Matters Challenge in 2014, “two concurrent challenges. One, an educational program challenge, aimed at young adults, seek[ing] to identify entities that have the expertise and capability to create compelling and impactful educational materials.” The second challenge focused on research, specifically research on young athletes and service members. The $23 million CARE Consortium (Concussion Assessment, Research and Education Consortium), enrolled more than 53,000 athletes and cadets from 26 schools and four service academies, making it “the largest concussion database of its kind.” One important CARE finding is that recovery is better measured over 28 days than over the old benchmark of 14 days.