Our Mission in Brief
The Cohort of Overpressured Warfighters Action Council exists because the men and women who served in the most demanding combat arms roles, infantrymen, artillery crews, mortarmen, tankers, combat engineers, breaching personnel, special operations teammates, and others who came home carrying an injury that their country had not yet learned to see.
Occupational blast overpressure exposure is not a fringe concern or an emerging hypothesis. It is a well-documented, peer-reviewed phenomenon with measurable neurological consequences – chronic, cumulative, and life-altering.
The gap between what the science now shows and what policy has so far delivered is not a knowledge problem. It is a will problem. COWAC exists to close that gap.
We are a veteran-led advocacy organization. Our board, our advisors, and the population we serve are drawn from the combat arms community – people who understand from the inside what blast exposure looks like, what it costs, and what it means to be denied recognition for an injury sustained in service to this nation. That lived experience is not incidental to our work. It is the foundation of it.
Our community of more than 3,000 active members is not an abstract constituency. They are the men and women the science is about – and they are watching what policy does next.
A Coalition of the Willing
COWAC does not work alone, and we do not believe in working alone. The scale of this issue – spanning policy, VA adjudication, federal research investment, and clinical practice demands a coordinated, multi-stakeholder response.
We actively partner with peer veteran service organizations who share a commitment to evidence-based advocacy and the long-term health of the combat arms community.
We engage medical and clinical organizations whose members are on the front lines of diagnosing and treating blast-affected veterans, often without the diagnostic frameworks or institutional support they need. We work alongside independent researchers, legal advocates, and investigative journalists whose work has brought this issue further into public view.
And we collaborate directly with Congressional staff and federal policy teams bringing primary source documentation, clinical evidence summaries, and veteran testimony to every engagement.
Our coalition is built on shared purpose, not shared politics. We welcome any organization, clinician, researcher, or advocate who is willing to follow the evidence and stand with affected veterans regardless of their broader institutional affiliations or policy orientations.
A Non-Partisan Commitment
The neurological health of combat arms veterans is not a partisan issue. It has never been. Veterans have bled under the flags of administrations from both parties, and the institutional failures that have left blast-exposed veterans without recognition or recourse span decades of Congressional and executive leadership across the political spectrum.
COWAC engages with legislators, committee staff, and federal agencies on the merits – bringing data, clinical evidence, and veteran testimony to every conversation, and asking every office the same questions regardless of party or ideology. We have found allies and champions on both sides of the aisle, and we intend to keep it that way. Our only litmus test is this: will you look at the evidence, and will you act on it?
We believe the strength of a non-partisan posture is not merely strategic. It is a reflection of who we serve. Combat arms veterans come from every state, every background, and every political tradition. Their injuries do not sort by party registration. Neither does our advocacy.
Legislative & Policy Objectives
COWAC advances a focused legislative and policy agenda on behalf of combat arms veterans exposed to occupational blast overpressure – an injury mechanism that has been systematically undercounted, underdiagnosed, and undercompensated for decades. Our objectives are grounded in peer-reviewed science, veteran testimony, and the growing evidentiary record linking repetitive low-level blast exposure to chronic neurological harm.
Modernized Blast Exposure Monitoring Standards
Current Department of War (DoW) protocols were designed to detect acute traumatic brain injury from single high-magnitude blast events. They are inadequate for the cumulative, subclinical exposures that characterize the occupational environments of artillerists, tankers, mortarmen, combat engineers, and breaching personnel.
COWAC supports the establishment of mandatory, longitudinal blast dosimetry standards across all high-risk occupational specialties — including individualized exposure tracking, threshold-based medical evaluation triggers, and centralized data reporting to support long-term epidemiological research. These standards must apply throughout a servicemember’s career, not only following documented traumatic events.
VA Service-Connection Pathways for Blast-Related Neurological Injury
Veterans with documented service in high-blast-exposure occupational specialties face a near-impossible evidentiary burden when seeking VA compensation for neurological conditions linked to repetitive blast. Without a recognized exposure record, a validated diagnostic framework, or a clear presumptive pathway, most claims are denied at the rating stage.
COWAC advocates for the establishment of presumptive service connection for qualifying neurological conditions — including chronic traumatic encephalopathy spectrum disorders, persistent post-concussive syndrome, and related cognitive and neuroendocrine dysfunction — in veterans with documented service in designated high-risk Military Occupational Specialties.
Support for the Precision Brain Health Research Act
COWAC supports Senate Bill 800, the Precision Brain Health Research Act of 2025, and urges its passage as a critical step toward closing the research gap on occupational blast overpressure exposure. S. 800 would authorize targeted federal investment in the neuroimaging, biomarker, and longitudinal cohort research necessary to establish the causal links that VA adjudication and clinical diagnosis currently lack.
We call on the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee and Senate Armed Services Committee to advance this legislation without delay.
Transparent Data Collection and Institutional Accountability
For years, data on blast exposure incidence, accumulated dosimetry, and downstream health outcomes has remained siloed within DoD — inaccessible to independent researchers, treating clinicians, and veterans themselves. This opacity has served institutional interests at the direct expense of veteran health.
COWAC calls for mandatory public reporting of aggregate blast exposure data by branch and occupational specialty; independent audit authority over DoD and VA blast-related health research programs; and full transparency in the methods and findings of any internal studies bearing on service-connection determinations.
Congressional Oversight and Veteran-Centered Accountability
The neurological health crisis affecting blast-exposed combat arms veterans did not emerge overnight. Much has been accomplished, the DoD’s Warfighter Brain Health Initiative and 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which included blast safety officer provisions championed by our Cohort. COWAC continues to call on Congress to exercise robust oversight of both DoD/DoW blast-exposure policy and VA adjudication practices, and to hold those institutions accountable to the veterans they exist to serve.
We also recognize a practical reality that must be named directly: meritorious legislation in this space has stalled not because the science is in dispute, but because the question of budgetary offset has become a procedural obstacle that functions as a substitute for substantive engagement. COWAC rejects the premise that this is a legitimate barrier. The federal government is already bearing the costs of occupational blast overpressure injury in misattributed disability claims, in undertreated neurological disease, in the long-term social and economic consequences borne by affected veterans and their families. Those costs do not disappear when legislation stalls. They accumulate, invisibly, in a system that lacks the diagnostic and policy frameworks to address them correctly.
The choice before Congress is not between spending and not spending. It is between investing deliberately in research, recognition, and streamlined care pathways – or continuing to absorb the compounding costs of inaction. COWAC urges Congress to exercise the oversight necessary to ensure that fiscal process does not become a permanent shield against moral and scientific accountability.
Interested in partnering?
COWAC engages directly with Congressional offices, federal agencies, and peer veteran service organizations to advance these objectives.
To request a briefing, partner on advocacy, or access our evidence summary materials, contact us.
