As recently as the 1991 Gulf War, one out of every four soldiers wounded in battle died of their injuries. Now, thanks to dramatic improvements in equipment, training, and battlefield medicine, nine out of ten wounded soldiers will survive.

That means more veterans living with serious injuries. Like amputations.

There are at least 26,000 American veterans living with amputations, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the VA has been a world leader in helping people survive and recover from the loss of a limb.

That’s the purpose behind the new Functional Outcomes Research and Evaluation (FORE) Center at the Miami Veterans Affairs Healthcare System, the brainchild of Robert Gailey, Ph.D., P.T., an associate professor in the Department of Physical Therapy at the UM Miller School of Medicine.

“We’re trying to create a state-of-the-art research and rehabilitation center,” says Gailey, who has worked for the University for 20 years and with the government since 2001. “It doesn’t look like their father’s VA.”

The FORE Center, as it’s called, is designed for two purposes. Job one is to help the veterans with below-the-knee amputations improve their mobility and independence by analyzing what problems they’re having and customizing a rehabilitation program to improve them. But the second priority is also important—learning what works, documenting it, and disseminating what is learned.

The staff at the FORE Center is recording tremendous improvement by the end of the eight-week program.

“Our guys are getting better, they’re getting faster,” says Gailey. “And we know that if a person remains active, they stay healthier and have less impact on the overall health care system.”

More than 500 United States veterans have lost limbs to battlefield trauma in Iraq and Afghanistan, but many tens of thousands more will lose them to diabetes and peripheral artery disease. The mission of this new center is to help these veterans function as closely to normal as possible—to get them back on their feet.