Is The VA Prepared To Handle The Health Needs Of Women Veterans?
Currently, women make up about 15 percent of the active duty forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and by the year 2020 one in five young veterans will be female. Walter Reed and other Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals are treating more and more injured women than ever before – but are these hospitals prepared to handle all the distinctively female health issues that will be coming their way?
This is the subject of a CBS news segment being released tomorrow night, June 19th. The producers gave me an early head’s up so that I could alert my readers to it, and I immediately reached out to Revolution Health expert, Dr. Iffath Hoskins, for comment.
Dr. Hoskins is well-versed in both military healthcare and women’s health. She completed an obstetrics and gynecology residency at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. and a maternal fetal medicine fellowship at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. (This includes the National Naval Medical Center and the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.). She has been the Chair and Residency Director of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the New York University Downtown Hospital, and the Chief of Obstetrics at Bellevue Hospital. She currently serves as the Senior Vice President, Chairman and Residency Director in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Lutheran Medical Center in Brooklyn, N.Y.
Dr. Val: What sort of gaps in care will women military personnel encounter at the VA?
Dr. Hoskins: First of all, the gaps in care are not only for women personnel, but there are gaps in care for all personnel due to resource constraints at the VA hospitals. When the VA system was originally conceived there was no need to support women’s health services as very few women worked as full time military personnel. Now about 15% of military personnel are women. Of course, women have many of the same sorts of health problems as men (migraine headaches, high blood pressure, heart disease, etc.) and the VA system is adept at handling those concerns. But when it comes to female reproductive health, contraception, pregnancy, and disorders of menstruation, the VA system is simply not equiped to handle that.
Dr. Val: How can the VA adapt to serve this influx of women veterans?
Dr. Hoskins: First of all the VA needs to recognize the unique needs of women and identify personnel within the VA system who are capable of meeting these needs. Even in the field some of the rules surrounding uniform requirements have not been adapted to suit the needs of women. During wartime and/or deployments, resources for menstruating women (eg private toiletries, contraception, etc) were scarce. So, the women often bled onto their uniforms and this created problems with personal hygeine.
Dr. Val: Does the VA treat military wives and daughters? What sort of care are they currently getting and could women soldiers benefit from those services?
The VA does not treat dependents because they were designed to meet the healthcare needs of individuals returning from serving their countries in a wartime model. TRICARE is the coverage provided to them and many large hospitals and clinics accept this insurance nationwide.
Dr. Val: Do you think that physical disfigurement affects women differently than men?
Dr. Hoskins: I don’t believe that this is an issue. Women soldiers are tried and true professionals. They know that they are in the military to serve their community, unit, battalion, company, and country and have accepted the potential consequences of death and disfigurement. After working closely with these women for 26 years, I know that they consider themselves soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen first and foremost and are committed to doing whatever is expected and required of them.
When I was deployed in Operation Iraqi Freedom as one of the highest ranking Reserve Marine physicians, I conducted a research survey to explore the reactions of returning veterans to the large number of women involved in the operation. We asked them how they felt about having women living and working with them shoulder-to-shoulder in times of war, and whether it made a difference to the completion of the mission. We surveyed about 8000 military personnel, and 40% of them expressed concern about having women on the battlefield.
Dr. Val: What specific concerns did they have?
Dr. Hoskins: The respondents believed that the physical load and demand on the young men was greater than on the young women. Sometimes this wasn’t because of differences in physical strength but culturally the men wanted to help the women with their loads, and the women sometimes resented the help.The respondents noted that women who needed to retrieve their fallen comrades behaved differently than their male peers (the women were more likely to cry, which was frowned on by the men). Because the women and men were segregated in their sleeping quarters, accounting for everyone’s whereabouts became more difficult.
Overall the survey clearly showed that there was never a concern about whether or not the women were weapons-qualified. The respondents did not believe that the presence of women affected the success of their mission – but it certainly created distractions.
*Listen To The Podcast With Dr. Hoskins*This post originally appeared on Dr. Val’s blog at RevolutionHealth.com.
Return to article »