Data on Services for Women Veterans

Over the past few years, there’s been a groundswell of support for women veterans’ issues. From health care access to reproductive health services to a seismic culture change within the veteran community, women veterans have rightly been focused on and elevated on Capitol Hill, inside the VA, and nationally. In 2017, IAVA launched our groundbreaking campaign, #SheWhoBorneTheBattle, focused on recognizing the service of women veterans and closing gaps in care provided to them by the VA. Ahead of the times, we made the bold choice to lead on an issue that was important to not just the 13% of our members that are women, but to our entire membership, the future of healthcare, and America’s national security. We fought hard for top-down culture change in the VA for the more than 345,000 women who have fought in our current wars–and for all Americans.

In 2020, the cornerstone of IAVA’s #SheWhoBorneTheBattle campaign, the IAVA-led Deborah Sampson Act, was passed into law after a nearly four-year campaign. This groundbreaking legislation includes several important provisions that will address sexual harassment and assault in VA facilities, establish an Office of Women’s Health directly under the Undersecretary of VA for Health, and improve access to care and benefits for survivors of Military Sexual Trauma (MST).

Women are currently the fastest-growing population in both the military and veteran communities, and their numbers have been growing steadily since the 1970s. And while more women are joining the military and are finally being given unprecedented roles in combat and greater responsibilities in leadership, veteran services and benefits often fall behind.

While the past few years has been encouraging in the display of growing interest in ensuring health care accessibility for women veterans at VA, increasing support for women veterans, and expanding services, there is still much work to be done.

You have to know where a problem exists to fix it. And without good data, there is no way to know the extent to which women veterans are underserved, nor will there be a way to see if we are making progress in changing these systems. To design precise policy solutions and to hold accountable every agency in the continuum of care, we need robust data collection, sharing, analysis and publication.

Good policy is driven by good data, and we must do better as a community in understanding the needs and areas of support for women veterans and service members. This begins with reliable and robust data collection from DoD and follows into VA, expanding out to academia, public and private research groups, and anyone interested in data-driven policy. The Deborah Sampson Act took great strides to start collecting some of this data, now we must ensure that it is used properly to create effective change.

• Require DoD to include gender breakdown in all public data reporting
• Invest in research into the impacts of service on reproductive health and fertility for women veterans and their partners
• Ensure all VA studies and reports are collecting and reporting on gender breakdown
• Continue to report on environmental standards of care at every VA facility
• Ensure proper data collection and data sharing of women veterans using community care providers at VA
• Support outside research efforts studying women veterans