Veterans News for Tuesday, June 14, 2011.  Thanks to Kevin Secor at VA HQ!

 

1.    Some hopeful signs for mental health programs.  Modesto Bee  According to the current Secretary of the US Department of Veterans Affairs, more veterans have committed suicide since 2001 than have died in both the Iraqi and Afghanistan battlefields. For many people, the economic recession with ...

 

2.    Wars in Iran, Afghanistan create need for new technology.  Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Cooper also works on wheelchair technology and more for the US Department of Veterans Affairs. Cooper suffered a spinal cord injury in 1980 in a bicycle accident in Germany, where he was serving in the Army. It was there that Cooper met his wife, ...

 

3.    Tammy Duckworth leaving Dept. of Veterans Affairs.  Washington Post (blog)  Tammy Duckworth, left, is stepping down as assistant secretary at the Department of Veterans Affairs. (Photo by Matthew Lester) Tammy Duckworth, an Iraq war veteran and double amputee whose war injuries gave her a special understanding of ...

 

4.    Marine vet says he lost his cool in VA call.  Wilkes Barre Times-Leader  A veteran of the US Marine Corps does not dispute he used foul language toward a few female employees at the US Department of Veterans Affairs Regional Office in Philadelphia. But Robert Stahlnecker, 39, does deny his tone was threatening. ...

 

5.    Transitional veterans housing facility, conservation land registry go before.  Gainesville Sun  The Alachua County Housing Authority would operate the facility while the US Department of Veterans Affairs would offer counseling, medical care and other services to the residents, said Gail Monahan, the executive director of the housing authority.

 

6.    HUD, VA to Provide Permanent Housing, Case Management to Nearly 700 Homeless.
Business Wire  --US Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan and US Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric K. Shinseki announced today that HUD will provide $5.4 million to public housing authorities in 18 states to ...

 

7.    Temporary VA clinic to open in Hinesville.  Bryan County News  Area veterans' long wait for close and convenient medical care nearly is over. The US Department of Veterans Affairs will open a temporary health-care clinic July 5 in Hinesville. Veteran and 16-year Hinesville ...

 

8.    VHA Moves Toward RTLS Rollout.  RFID Journal  undefined On June 3, I had the opportunity to speak at an event hosted by the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), the division of the US Department of Veterans Affairs that manages 152 hospitals and more than 1000 other points of ...

 

9.    New housing for homeless veterans - Direct VA Loans.  Washington state recently began a new program to help homeless ... all who think they may be eligible to contact their local veteran's office. ...

 

10.                       Fort Howard Deal Could Be Signed in 3 Weeks.  Patch.com  The Maryland developers the Veterans Administration approved to overhaul the historic VA Fort Howard property into a veteran and senior residential community have told residents that they expect to sign a lease for the land near the end of June. ...

 

11.                       New banner salutes fallen local soldiers.  The Columbian  Not every deceased veteran with a Clark County connection is on the list; it depended on the level of contact between the veterans (or their families) and the VA. According to VA records, the most senior veteran on the banner is Army Maj. ...

 

12.                       Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst says 1000 World War II veterans die every day.  PolitiFact
According to data from the US Department of Veteran Affairs, in fiscal year 2010, about 263000 veterans who served during World War II died, nearly 15000 of whom lived in Texas. Nationally, that's about 721 a day. Some 244000 are expected to die in ...

 

13.                       Agent Orange, "Blue" Benefits?  CQ Weekly  "Veterans who served on ships off the shores of Vietnam think they should be eligible for the same benefits as other personnel who may have been exposed to Agent Orange defoliants and herbicides during the war, even though the Department of Veterans Affairs has required at least a 'foot on land' for such compensation. A report last month by the Institute of Medicine at the National Academies of Science said there was not enough information to say whether 'blue- water' Navy personnel had or had not been exposed to the defoliant." But the national commander of the American Legion, Jimmie L. Foster, "contends that 'reasonable doubt should be given to the veteran who shows symptoms of having been exposed to Agent Orange.'" Meanwhile, US Rep. Bob Filner (D-CA), has said in the past that VA "illogically refuses to acknowledge" benefits that have been earned by blue-water vets.

 

14.                       Vancouver VA Campus To House Homeless Vets.  Seattle Times According to the Columbian, the "Veterans Affairs campus in Vancouver is among 34 sites across the nation that will provide additional housing for homeless veterans and their families. The Vancouver VA campus will provide building sites for veterans' housing, said Mike McAleer, spokesman for the Portland/Vancouver VA system." In a news release, US Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) "applauded the initiative," stating, "I'm so pleased that veterans and their families in Vancouver will have new opportunities to get off the streets and into safe and stable homes."

 

15.                       For Military, Different Wars Mean Different Injuries.  NPR  The "biggest threats troops face in Iraq and Afghanistan are landmines, improvised-explosive devices and other roadside explosives...says" former military physician Dr Ron Glasser, who wrote about the threats "in his new book, Broken Bodies Shattered Minds: A Medical Odyssey from Vietnam to Afghanistan." After noting that in Vietnam, soldiers were most often injured by bullets, NPR added, "In Vietnam, Glasser says, there were 2.4 casualties for every death," but that ratio is now 16-to-1. That is the "'reason the VA is being overwhelmed,' Glasser says, referring to the Department of Veterans Affairs."

 

16.                       Once A Critic, VA Blogger Seeks To Fix Problems. NPR  Iraq veteran Alex Horton criticized VA in his personal blog, Army of Dude, the agency "hired him. Horton, who now writes for the VA's VAntage Point blog, tells NPR's Rachel Martin that the change was a good thing." In his new role, Horton is more aware of the challenges VA faces when attempting to help vets. As he put it to NPR, "I know how it's a huge bureaucracy and there are some parts that work well and some that need to be worked on. You have a bigger appreciation for what those issues are, and you're compelled to help fix those now."

 

17.                       Duckworth To Be Featured Speaker At Rantoul Event. Urbana/Champaign (IL) News-Gazette  Tammy Duckworth of Hoffman Estates, nominated by President Obama to serve as the Department of Veterans Affairs assistant secretary for public and intergovernmental affairs, will be the featured speaker at Women with Wings. The event will be held from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. June 25 at Chanute Air Museum, Rantoul." After noting that Duckworth flew Blackhawk helicopters in Iraq, the News-Gazette said Women with Wings "will be filled with activities for and about women in aviation."

 

18.                       VA Adds Care For Female Veterans. KOAA-TV "Over the years, Veterans Affairs clinics have appeared to be more male dominated, but as the...number of females vets continues to rise so does the push for specialized care." It is an "initiative that will...add a new clinic in Colorado Springs" in 2014. KOAA added, "'We will have a specialty clinic and expand the capacity there to give them more privacy and more women services,' Jerryann Ascione, Project Manager, Colorado Springs, said."

 

19.                       OMB Twists Arms To Push Cloud Projects. Federal Times"Agencies are striking ambitious plans to migrate a host of information technology services to the cloud within a year." For example, at the Veterans Affairs Department, the announcement of Office of Management and Budget's "cloud-first policy last December prompted it to scrap plans to bid a contract to modernize its email system for 600,000 users, said VA CIO Roger Baker." According to the Times, the agency then "issued a new request for information to vendors. Under the project, dubbed 'Big 4,' VA will have the software and hardware for the email system reside in four contractor-owned and -operated data centers."

 

20.                       Veterans Use Stand Down To Get Back On Feet.  Florence (SC) Morning News "CB Anderson, homeless committee chairman of the Pee Dee Area Veterans Advisory Council, said about 300 of those homeless veterans are living in the Pee Dee." He "had been dreaming of a way to help them for the past three years through Stand Down, an event that first began in San Diego in 1988." Recently, that "dream became a reality ...when 10 homeless veterans braved the first Stand Down event in at Florence American Legion Post 1."

 

21.                       Eye Doctors Salvage Sight In War Zone. USA Today "With so much debris flung by gunfire, improvised explosive devices and other hazards of war, protective eye wear is mandatory for every US soldier in Afghanistan." Because soldiers are wearing eye protection, "the US military's two in-country ophthalmologists said they are treating few US forces for battled-related eye injuries that result in extensive permanent damage." As a result, one of the eye doctors estimates that only about 10% of the eyes treated cannot be saved. Follow-up post-surgical eye care "comes from Capt. Warren Gross, a 56-year-old Army reservist and optometrist with a practice in Miami Beach."

 

22.                       Bariatric Surgery Not Significantly Associated With Reducing Mortality. AP"Very obese older men hoping to live longer may be let down by a new long-term study that found weight-loss surgery didn't increase survival for people like them -- at least during the first seven years," according to research appearing June 15th in the Journal of the American Medical Association and presented this past weekend at the Academy Health Annual Research Meeting. The "new study in mostly older male veterans suggests one of two things: Not everyone gains equally from surgery, or a survival benefit may show up later in older men, after more years of follow-up."

 

23.                       Pittsburgh Veterans Hospital Develops Program To Correct Aphasia. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette "Program for Intensive Residential Aphasia Treatment and Education, or PIRATE," is in operation at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Pittsburgh. It is the "only program of its kind in the VA system nationally and one of only a few intensive aphasia rehab programs in the country." Aphasia, noted the Post-Gazette, is a "language processing disorder" that impairs a person's "ability to process word forms."

 

24.                       Veterans Find Help At Facility. Charleston (WV) Daily Mail  "LeeAnn Bills, homeless coordinator for the Huntington Veterans Administration Medical Center, believes there is a great need for more transitional housing for veterans in the community - facilities where homeless veterans can live until they get back on their feet." One place where such vets can find assistance is the "Roark-Sullivan Lifeway Center's transitional living home for veterans."

 

25.                       Veterans Give Their Time, Energy To VSO. St. George (UT) Spectrum (

 

26.                       Pennsylvania AMVETS Swears In First Female Commander. Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

 

27.                       Kentucky Veteran's Advocacy Yields Millions For Multiple Sclerosis Research.  Louisville Courier-Journal

 

28.                       Providence Center Clinic Integrates Treatment Of Mental And Physical Disorders.  Providence Journal

 

29.                       Doctors Given Exclusive Deals At Kettering Medical Center. Dayton Daily News "Kettering Medical Center has contracted exclusively with a group of surgeons to perform valve and other specialized heart surgeries at the hospital, a move that limits patient choice but hospital officials say ensures good patient care." Hospitals are "also gaining such control by employing physicians directly. The Dayton Daily News found in 2010 that nonprofit hospitals, the Dayton VA Medical Center, Wright State University and Wright-Patterson Medical Center employed nearly 1,000 physicians."

 

30.                       Fighting For Treatment. Spokane (WA) Spokesman-Review

 

31.                       Jackson Pares Funds To Curb VA Liability. Investment News

 

32.                       New Banner Salutes Fallen Local Soldiers. Vancouver (WA) Columbian