The Institute of Medicine has been asked to provide guidance on the future of the Air Force Health Study (AFHS, also know as the Ranch Hand Study), a long-term epidemiologic study of Air Force personnel who conducted aerial spraying of herbicides during the Vietnam War. 

This interim letter report focuses on how on data and specimens collected from study participants have been catalogued and stored.  It recommends that these data assets should be reorganized and documented in a manner that allows them to be easily understood, evaluated, managed, or analyzed by persons outside of the AFHS.

A later, final report will address larger issues, such as whether and in what form the study should be extended.