AFSO21 makes strides to reduce DUIs at Luke

  • Published
  • By Stephen Delgado
  • 56th Fighter Wing Public Affairs
LUKE AIR FORCE BASE, Ariz. --  The Air Force has been working hard over the years to decrease the number of incidents of driving under the influence, with modest success. Employing Air Force Smart Operations for the 21st Century may help to increase the success rate.

"AFSO21 did a process improvement event on DUI prevention through education and awareness," said Tech. Sgt. Mark Adams, 56th Maintenance Group AFSO21 NCO-in-charge. "We had a team meet in March, and they have been working on a plan to implement the new ideas the team came up with. The team had 12 members ranging in age, rank and specialty. We had team members who were personally affected by drunk driving, either by a death in the family or being stopped for DUI.

"The DUI working group identified that current educational efforts fail to help Airmen construct an action plan when they are involved in activities that involve the consumption of alcohol."

Currently, Luke's DUI prevention and education program consists of Airmen Against Drunk Drivers that is unit based, according to Sergeant Adams.

"Luke's AADD unit-based program means that each unit is responsible for providing an AADD service to their assigned service members," said Jerold Haupt, 56th Security Forces Squadron standards and evaluation superintendent and DUI working group team lead. "This program satisfies the prevention piece, but for DUI awareness and education there are many facets involved. Currently, we utilize wing in-processing and the first term airmen's course as venues to brief on DUI prevention. We also rely on supervisors and leaders to continuously brief safe driving habits. Furthermore, we share recent DUI events and consequences associated with them via the boards at each gate and the base newspaper."

AFSO21 has many continuous process improvement methodologies associated with it that would help to eliminate waste in the process thus leading to more efficiency, according to Sergeant Adams.

"The AFSO21 event we did at Luke for DUI prevention involved the education and awareness process," he said. "Our findings were that we are effective in continuous briefings, but not so effective in the getting the message across. In the AFSO21 world, this is called a defect. Our communication was defective because we briefed 'don't drink and drive' and 'have a plan,' but we never clearly defined what a plan was."

The team had two members on the team who had a DUI even though both had plans.

"Both not only had a plan, but they shared it with their supervisors," Sergeant Adams said. "However, they still received DUIs, because either their plan broke down, or their plan wasn't good to begin with. Using AFSO21, we found how we could standardize the definition of a plan and plan breakdown and start to give those standard definitions to the community. The team came up with a slogan to add to the training at in-processing."

The slogan, 'WHAT THEN,' is an acronym where each letter stands for a thought that helps build the plan and back-up plan. The team is hoping to get the 'WHAT THEN' slogan printed on cards to be passed out. The letters stand for: W - "Where are you going?" H - "How are you getting there?" A - "Airmen, family or friends going with you?" and T - "Time going and returning."

For the second word, T - "Turn of events: What equals a plan breakdown?" H - "Have three options" E - "Execute option" and N - "Never drink and drive or ride with an impaired driver."

"The reverse side of the card will be for the member and the supervisor to develop a plan breakdown scenario that has three to five backups a member can do to prevent a DUI," he said. "None of these plans and backups may actually prevent someone from putting the keys in the ignition. We want to provide people with the tools to effectively build a plan and be prepared for its breakdown."

The team will be adopting additional initiatives.

"We want to change the sign at the gate," Mr. Haupt said. "The information there blends in and is hard to read, and most of the time the consequence is still pending. They are going to add a previous consequence, so someone can still have an idea of the punishment. Furthermore, the colors will be contrasted to make it visual. Finally, the 'WHAT THEN' campaign will be added to all DUI prevention briefings, and the 'WHAT THEN' cards will be added to sponsorship packages stapled to the commander's policy on DUIs.

"The DUI prevention program is designed to help prevent the keys from getting into the ignition. The DUI Education/Awareness initiative is designed to standardize the definition of a plan and development of a back-up plan in case of a plan breakdown."

Sergeant Adams said the team will soon kick off the 'WHAT THEN' program by passing out these cards at the gate. They are very proud of the work they did and are excited to see this program get off the ground.

Chief Master Sgt. Rory Wicks, 56th Fighter Wing command chief and the team's champion, was excited with what the team came up with.

"The team did a superb job," he said. "Thanks to each of you for keeping the irons hot on this issue. All we can do is keep chatting on the program's availability at all levels to assure widespread awareness and efforts such as this one will be vital to our success."
Sergeant Adams said the vision is to be able to package 'WHAT THEN' into a business-type contract card, which will enable Airmen to establish back-up plans and allow the supervisor to check the plans for viability and practicality.

"When a framework is used to establish a primary and back-up plan, it allows the Airman to think through the entire process of responsible drinking behaviors, verbalize the plan to his or her supervisor, and ultimately reduce his or her's risk to driving while under the influence of alcohol.