Navigating Benefits and Services Remains a Top Challenge for Veterans, Families

This month House lawmakers approved a $52 billion legislative package that would revamp the way the Department of Veterans Affairs pays and provides health care for veterans.

Nick Armstrong is the senior director for research and evaluation at Syracuse University’s Institute for Veterans and Military Families (IVMF). He says the legislation further highlights the critical need for coordinated networks of resources, services and care for veterans.

Armstrong says:

“For more than six years now, veterans have persistently cited navigating benefits and services as a top challenge in multiple studies across the country, including our own. This bill highlights the critical role for coordinated networks of resources, services, and care in communities. Communities are where military families transition and seek services, and no one entity can do it alone.

“IVMF research has found that navigating the sea of services and benefits is a top challenge among veterans nationwide. Coordinated networks are like community safety nets making sure people don’t slip through the cracks – that they have a ride to their doctor’s appointment – wherever that appointment may be, that they have safe and accessible housing, can find a job, have access to financial support in an emergency, receive a benefits review, along with a spectrum of other services.

“Coordinated approaches like AmericaServes allow military families to receive services that extend beyond the VA, whether to other healthcare entities or other public sector agencies, as well as a range of organizations that treat the social determinants of health.”

Additional research resources:

• Report: Driving Community Impact – A Case for Local Evidence-Based Coordination in Veteran and Military Family Services and the AmericaServes Institute
• Report: AmericaServes Transparency Report

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Daryl Lovell
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