ONEOP (FORMERLY KNOWN AS MILITARY FAMILIES LEARNING NETWORK)

A core tenant of military life is the importance of family readiness as it relates to force readiness. The necessity of supporting service members and their families in an all-volunteer force is evidenced in both the James M. Inhofe National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023 and in the current text of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024. These supports for quality of life may include, but are not limited to, issues such as food insecurity, mental health and counseling services, domestic and sexual violence, support for individuals with disabilities, childcare, and housing among others. Service members need to focus on their mission readiness and in order to do so, it is critical they know their families are ready and prepared for life's challenges. Military families face unique stressors including permanent changes of station, lengthy work hours for the service member, deployments, and exposure to combat-related activities (MacDermid Wadsworth, 2010). Most military families are resilient in the face of these challenges, but community support is critical to developing and maintaining family resilience (Bowen, Martin, & Mancini, 2013).In 2021, the Department of Defense (DoD) issued DoD Instruction 1342.22, establishing the Military Family Readiness System (MFRS). The MFRS is an integrated approach to service delivery that increases family readiness, which in turn increases the retention, resilience, readiness, and quality of life for service members and their families. OneOp supports Secretary Austin's 2021 priorities to grow our nation's talent, build resilience and readiness, and strengthen partnerships across the United States of America by advancing the MFRS through open-access learning and networking opportunities for service providers. Our target audience includes professionals working on and off installations, throughout the Cooperative Extension System, and within communities nationwide to help families navigate the unique experiences of active-duty service. Fundamentally, service providers need to understand their role in the MFRS as well as maintain content-based knowledge, training, and credentials. Ensuring adequate and relevant research-based and evidence-informed professional development and credentialing across this wide range of services is an expensive and time-consuming effort.OneOp, currently based at Auburn University, has thirteen years of experience meeting DoD's professional development needs. The current OneOp team includes eight collaboration teams led by faculty at land grant and military-serving universities: Personal Finance (University of Kentucky), Family Transitions (Cornell University), Nutrition and Wellness (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), Military Community Advocacy (Virginia Tech), Building Communities (North Dakota State University), Lifespan Caregiving (Texas A&M), Military- Connected Children and Youth (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), and Souse Employment (East Carolina University). Working closely with subject matter experts at DoD to identify critical and trending issues, our collaboration teams create and deliver timely and innovative professional development opportunities for service providers worldwide. The work of the collaboration teams is supported by a Core Leadership (CL) team with expertise in family science, human development, curriculum and instruction, program development and evaluation, educational technology, communications, and web-based educational platforms.