VA HQ Veterans News for Wednesday, August 3, 2011.  Thanks to Kevin Secor at VA HQ!

1.    Veterans are eligible for graduate scholarships.  Graduate Guide  The US Department of Veterans Affairs states that in 2010, more than 26000 veterans enrolled in graduate-level classes thanks to the GI Bill. By Monique Smith GraduateGuide.com - helping you find colleges and universities that offer the accredited ... 

2.    Local leaders rallying support for vet center.  Clarksville Leaf Chronicle  The resolutions would be a symbolic measure aimed at getting the attention of national lawmakers and the US Department of Veterans Affairs, who would administer the facility. Vet centers were created for readjustment counseling under a law passed by ... 

3.    Risperdal Ineffective for Treatment of PTSD in Veterans.  PsychCentral.com  Within the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), 89 percent of veterans diagnosed with PTSD and treated with pharmacotherapy are prescribed the most common type of antidepressant undefined selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). ... 

4.    Cambridge College in Chesapeake is Now a Yellow Ribbon Participant School for 2012.  PR Newswire  ... school for 2012 by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs. The Yellow Ribbon program allows institutions of higher learning (degree granting institutions) in the United States to voluntarily enter into an agreement with Veterans Affairs ... 

5.    Call For Photos: Putting Faces To Names On The Wall.  Patch.com  CCSU and state Veterans' Affairs department team up on national project – and you can help, too. By Elissa Bass More than 58000 Americans were killed or missing in action in Vietnam. There were 612 soldiers from Connecticut killed in action in the ... 

6.    Grants provide extra support for vets.  UT Daily Beacon  Veterans will have to be deemed eligible by the Department of Veterans Affairs in order to receive the scholarships. According to the Yellow Ribbon Program website, a veteran must be a College of Business Administration graduate student in good ... 

7.    Veterans Wheelchair Games Begin In City. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette On Monday, the games "kicked off on the Roberto Clemente Bridge...with a wheelchair slalom event." Over 600 vets are "expected to participate" in the games, which "continue through Saturday." Opening ceremonies for the games were to take place at 6 p.m. on Monday night, at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center.

 

8.    Veteran Unemployment Rate Remains High.  Superior (WI) Telegram  "Nationally and in Wisconsin, the unemployment rate for veterans is higher than the general population. And more soldiers could be returning home looking for jobs as 10,000 troops are withdrawn from Afghanistan by the end of this year" Wisconsin, which "has held nine of 14 job fairs for veterans this year," is starting a welding apprentice program for vets that guarantees a job somewhere in the US.

 

9.    VA To Test Drop-In Child Care For Health Appointments. Army Times "Three Veterans Affairs hospitals will offer on-site, drop-in child care for patients coming in for appointments under a pilot program designed to ease the stress of seeking medical treatment, VA Secretary Eric Shinseki said. The free program is being offered at VA medical centers in Tacoma, Wash., and Buffalo and Northport, N.Y." After the program has been in operation for two years, VA will "submit a report to Congress to determine whether the program should continue or expand."

 

10.                       Soldiers Take One Step At A Time With Prosthetic Limbs.  Washingtonian Profiles Dan Berschinski, Dawn Halfaker, and Ryan Kules, who all spent time at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center and who all have worn prosthetic limbs after being injured during service in one of America's two current wars. Kules summed up his post-injury experience, stating, "People assume you go to the hospital and get better, and to a certain extent that's true. But I don't think they fully understand that what happens to us remains with us forever. Our limbs don't grow back, and we are never the same person. It is always with us, and we have to find a way to live our lives as fully as we can in spite of what happened to us."

 

11.                       Vice President Invites Wounded Marine To Have Breakfast With Him.   CNN  "As Vice President Joe Biden was leaving the House floor following the debt ceiling vote, he bumped into Marine Cpl. Todd Love and wound up inviting him over for breakfast Tuesday. Todd was wounded by an improvised explosive device in Sangin, Afghanistan, in October 2010 and lost both his legs and an arm." Todd, who is currently a patient at Walter Reed, was "brought to the Capitol Monday by Capitol Hill tour guide Bert Caswell, who often volunteers his own time to bring wounded warriors to the Capitol."

 

12.                       Simulations Being Used To Help Veterans Recover From Brain Injuries.  KTRK-TV "About 300,000 veterans are believed to have suffered brain injuries in Iraq or Afghanistan." Now, the DeBakey Veterans Affairs Hospital "have opened a new national center for brain injury study." The center is "conducting seven pilot studies...to find and treat mild traumatic brain injuries." 

13.                       Project Air: Yoga Helps HIV-Positive Rape Victims In Rwanda. Huffington Post  Project Air is an "initiative that uses yoga to help over 400 HIV-positive Rwandan women and their families cope with the trauma they endured when an estimated 800,000 Rwandans were killed in only 100 days -- and countless women were raped -- as the Hutu majority tribe tried to wipe out the Tutsi minority." In the US, meanwhile, Veterans Affairs "has used yoga to assist veterans coping" with post-traumatic stress disorder, In addition, a "small 2010 study funded by the US Department of Defense and conducted by Sat Bir A. Khalsa, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, found that veterans' symptoms improved after a 10-week yoga class."

 

14.                       Heading Off Problems. Boston Globe "Growing concern about the long-term effects of frequent head trauma has begun to change how the game" of football is "practiced and played at the highest levels." Recent "research around the long-term effects of head trauma by...the Boston University Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy has markedly elevated the level of concern about concussions. In conjunction" with the Bedford Veterans Affairs Medical Center, the "Boston researchers have been studying the brains of deceased veterans and retired NFL players for signs of a degenerative disease caused by repeated blows to the head called chronic traumatic encephalopathy" and have so far found that the 14 out of 15 deceased players studied had the disease.

 

15.                       Are Hospital-Based Doctors Fueling Health Spending?  Reuters  A new study in the Annals of Internal Medicine suggests that an increasing number of hospital-based US doctors, or hospitalists, could be putting a strain on Medicare, as patients seen by such doctors tend to be readmitted to hospitals more often than patients of doctors not based in hospitals. In an editorial accompanying the study, Dr. Lena Chen and Dr. Sanjay Saint of the Veterans Affairs hospital in Ann Arbor, Michigan, wrote, "Under pressure to shorten length of stay, hospitalists may be willing to discharge sicker patients, leading to increased readmissions." Chen and Sanjay went on to say the new "findings remind us that we need more studies that follow our patients wherever they go and help us practice the sort of coordinated care that is most likely to lead to high-quality outcomes."

 

16.                       Lung Biopsy Risks Not Uncommon. MedPage Today  "Needle biopsy of suspicious lung nodules, initially detected by CT scan, isn't as benign as often thought, according to a population-based study that quantified the risks in community practice. Needle biopsy led to clinically-significant hemorrhage for 1% of patients and pneumothorax for 15%," found a study appearing "in the Aug. 2 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine." The "study was funded by an award from the National Cancer Institute and by the Department of Veterans Affairs."

 

17.                       Close Calls Up, Surgical Errors Down.  RT Magazine "A new study cites a greater emphasis on safety, as well as improved training and communication, as possible reasons for a drop in the rate of reported adverse events and for decreased harm for patients in Veterans Health Administration medical centers. The number of monthly adverse events dropped to 2.4 from the 3.21 reported in a previous study." The new report also "found that close calls, events in which significant harm could have been caused but was averted, increased from 1.97 reports per month to 3.24."

 

18.                       Bill Seeks Tracking Of Sex-Assault Incidents At VA Sites. Army Times  "The Veterans Affairs Department would be required to track and report incidents of sexual assault and security events in VA medical facilities under a House bill aimed at protecting veterans while they seek" healthcare. The Veterans Sexual Assault Protection Act, HR 2074, is a "response to a Government Accountability Office report in June that lambasted VA hospital and clinics for failing to report incidents or alleged occurrences of rape, fondling, forceful medical exams and other criminal behavior to VA leaders or the VA inspector general."

 

19.                       Bill To Give Veterans Better Access To Jobs Passes. Lodi (CA) News-Sentinel A "bill to give veterans access to job opportunities was approved Thursday by the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee" of the House Veterans Affairs Committee. The bill, HR 2243, "would require the secretary of labor to establish a website with information about the number of veterans employed by federal contractors." Currently, contractors are required to file reports with the secretary "on the number of veterans they hire and employ, but this information is not easily accessible to the public."

 

20.                       Troubled Vets Finding Hope At Aurora VetCare Home. Aurora (IL) Beacon-News Substance abuse counselor Jeff Gilbert, who said that he saw a lot of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans "suffering from a lot of war-borne mental health issues because of what they experienced overseas." So, according to the Beacon-News, Gilbert decided to expand the "mission he'd begun more than a decade ago with Hope For Tomorrow, an Aurora-based network of recovery homes for veterans. A year and a half ago he and his wife, Janet, founded US VETCare, a home in Aurora" that counsels vets "on drug issues and their underlying causes." The Gilberts are currently raising money to build a second US VETCare home.

 

21.                       New Effort To Reach Military Families Launches In Montgomery County.  Gaithersburg (MD) Gazette  "A new initiative by the Mental Health Association of Montgomery County aims to improve the system by which providers approach care for active service members, veterans and their families." The recently launched "Serving Together: Troops, Veterans and Family Care Project...is designed to educate nonprofits, military agencies and public service facilities - any group through whose doors a service member may walk - about how to handle military clients and about the network of other resources. About 50,000 veterans live in Montgomery County; about 4,000 of them have served in Iraq or Afghanistan."

 

22.                       Jamaica Plain Nonprofit To Receive $1M To Aid Poor Veteran Families. Boston Globe  "A Jamaica Plain organization is one of two nonprofits in Massachusetts that will each receive $1 million to improve housing and expand support services for 'very low-income' families of veterans, officials announced last week. Volunteers of America of Massachusetts in Jamaica Plain and Veterans Inc. in Worcester were awarded the federal funding from the veterans affairs department's Supportive Services for Veterans Families Program, said a joint announcement Wednesday from US Senators John Kerry and Scott Brown and US Representatives Jim McGovern and Michael Capuano." The presidents of both nonprofits both released statements expressing their gratitude for VA's help.

 

23.                       Groups Aim To Help Build Housing For Ailing Vets. New Haven (CT) Post-Chronicle "Veterans groups and the local Elks lodge are getting the word out about Fisher House, a program that supports military families and veterans." The groups and the lodge "have been raising money for Fisher House, described as a Ronald McDonald House for military families. Fisher House will be built on the campus of the Veterans Affairs hospital in West Haven, once enough funds are raised, according to Abner Oakes, chairman of the Hamden Veterans Commission."

 

24.                       Finally, A VA Check For Disabled Oak Lawn Marine's Wife. Chicago Sun-Times "Aimee Zmysly has been the unpaid caretaker" of her husband, a disabled veteran, for over six years. Now, "thanks to a new federal law that the Oak Lawn couple helped spur the passage of, caregivers for severely disabled veterans can get a stipend" from the US Department of Veterans Affairs, and Aimee Zmysly recently received her first check from VA, for $3,541.26. She told the Sun-Times that it is "good to be recognized for what" she "and other people have been doing for years." The Sun-Times added that so far, VA has "approved 560 of 1,600 applicants nationally" for the program.

 

25.                       Sarasota National Cemetery For Veterans Quickly Becoming A National Model And Community Showcase. Sarasota (FL) Herald Tribune  The Sarasota National Cemetery is currently a "largely barren and featureless mourning ground for veterans. But as a result of a unique collaboration of local philanthropic groups that will funnel millions of dollars to the site, officials at the memorial grounds are aiming to create a model for future national cemeteries within two years." By "2013, fueled by a $5.5 million endowment from The Patterson Foundation, Sarasota National Cemetery is scheduled to unveil an innovative assembly area capable of seating up to 2,500 visitors."

 

26.                       More Than $28.7 Million In Assistance Goes To Local Veterans. Adrian (MI) Daily Telegram  "In 2010-11, 8,516 Lenawee County veterans and their families were serviced by the Veterans Administration with expenditures of $28,751,000." The data was "released by the Lenawee County Department of Veterans Affairs for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30."

 

27.                       Integrated Disability Evaluation System Still A Clunker. NextGov  "The joint Defense/VA Integrated Disability Evaluation System, under development since 2007, is supposed to expedite the process to determine whether troops remain on active duty or, if they are discharged, what their benefits will be. But this supposedly new and improved system cannot speedily handle the most obvious of cases, as Crystal Nicely," wife of a disabled vet, recently told a hearing of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee. Nicely "said the system started to work only after the intervention" of US Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), which means, said Brewin, Murray could be "mighty busy" if she has to intervene on behalf of other wounded US soldiers.

 

28.                       VA Chaplain Ryan Wagers Feels Blessed To Care For Veterans. Salisbury (NC) Post  "Chaplain Ryan E. Wagers, chief of Chaplain Services" at the W.G. (Bill) Hefner Veterans Affairs Medical Center. He "gets emotional when talking about the blessing he has been given. 'It's a wonderful thing to serve people who are willing to die for you,' he said, his voice breaking slightly as he talked about his job. 'It's a real blessing for me to be able to do that.'"

 

29.                       "150 Years Of Oregon Veterans" Offers Stories From Generations Of Vets.  Oregonian

 

30.                       Homeless POW Vet Says He's Tired Of Fighting. Chicago Sun-Times

 

31.                       Scott: Not Appropriate For Himself To Be On List For Vets' Hall. Lakeland (FL) Ledger

 

32.                       Florida Veterans' Hall Of Fame: What Could Go Wrong? Lakeland (FL) Ledger

 

33.                       Gift Offers Insight Into War's Horrors. Sioux Falls (SD) Argus Leader

 

34.                       Our Town Throws A Party. The Montgomery (PA) News (8/2, Beetham, 21K). 

 

35.                       Shell Awarded Distinguished Service Cross For Military Service In Korea Conflict. Elizabethton (TN) Star

 

36.                       Motorcyclists To Raise Money For Kentucky National Guard Memorial With Ride On Aug. 13. AP

 

37.                       Program Helps Disabled Vets Become Entrepreneurs. American Forces Press Service  Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans With Disabilities at Florida State University (FSU) is "part of a program designed to help participants get their businesses off the ground or enhance ventures they have started." Syracuse University's Whitman School of Management "in New York was the first to offer the program for veterans disabled as a result of their military service since Sept. 11, 2001." Now, a "consortium of seven universities around the United States participates.".