The Pentagon should do more to encourage COVID-19 vaccines among the ranks, according to an opinion piece authored by Andrea Mazzarino and published by The Nation. Mazzarino, a Navy spouse and co-founder of Brown University’s Costs of War Project, was responding to news reports that up to one-third of service members have chosen not to get vaccinated.

“What stuns me as a military spouse is how little the Pentagon—a distinctly top-down organization that operates by command, not wish—is doing about the problem of troops’ opting out of being vaccinated,” she wrote.

Mazzarino called on President Joe Biden to issue an executive order mandating vaccines for service members.

“I wish he would devote as much effort and time to ensuring that military bases carried out their vaccination efforts in a competent and accountable manner, as his administration has in so many civilian locales throughout this country,” she wrote.

Air National Guard Photo by Senior Airman Ryan Mancuso