Veteran Healthcare Advocates Want VA to Focus More on Prevention
WASHINGTON, July 1, 2008--A first-ever leadership summit for veterans' healthcare advocates ended here Thursday in general agreement that the Department of Veterans Affairs must focus more time and resources on prevention and preventive medicine practices.
The objective of the Patient Advocacy Leaders Summit, sponsored by the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the U.S., was to expand awareness about critical health issues that impact the lives of veterans and those currently serving in uniform. Almost 100 attendees from more than three dozen organizations from the veteran and medical communities were present to hear and interact with prominent physicians and researchers in the fields of Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBI), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders (PTSD), Diabetes, and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD).
The TBI seminar focused on the effects blast injuries are having on servicemen and women deployed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. More than 20 percent of the 1.6 million men and women who had served in the war had experienced a blast – mostly caused by improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. Better body armor combined with modern battlefield medicine and rapid transportation have reduced the war's mortality-to-casualty rate to 10 percent, compared to previous wars that had 25 percent fatality rates in Vietnam and Korea, and 30 percent during World War II. The high survivability rates, however, are resulting in multiple grievous injuries that will continue to challenge the medical community – and the wounded veterans – for years.
Symptoms, diagnostic issues and challenges were presented at the PTSD seminar, as well as who was most at risk: military reservists under the age of 25 who have had repeated deployments, as well as those who are repeatedly exposed to traumatic events. This seminar also found the results of three independent PTSD studies to be similar: a quarter to one-third of those who went to war came home with mental health problems.
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