 good if good afternoon that's not gonna get it good afternoon see last year you guys got me fired up you were so loud and so on fire for women veterans that I came in the building expecting the same thing so I can't I can't settle for less so let's get fired up today for women veterans so as you came in you were giving some documents that will be necessary for you as you preview the film later on in this seminar also at the back of the room there are a couple of documents that I want to bring to your attention one is for the Center for Women Veterans we work closely with them and they assist us in ensuring that your needs are being met and anytime that you have difficulty they're at your service to provide you with assistance the other one is the ongoing VA cultural transformation efforts just a little slide of different things that the VA is doing for you and how many department women veteran chairs do we have in the building I would like to meet with you after this seminar just to get some information what we're trying to do is build a directory of all of you so that we can reach out to you to get you information on the things that are going on in the VA and to make sure that your toolkit is properly outfitted with all of the information necessary for you also in the back of the room there's a fact sheet on the women veterans population and there's also something back there on prosthetics how many of you know that there are women women specific prosthetics that are available for you that's good everybody's hands should go up so there are some things like wigs that are available to you that you may not have known about so we're gonna make sure that you get this information and and I want you to know that we're working hard at the headquarters level to be heavily involved as VA rewrites their directives on the prosthetics and adaptive equipment and so forth also how many of you got the opportunity to see the art exhibit in the women veterans in the VAs in the different VAs all of that art was done by women veterans so I think it's important to show that we can still overcome we're very active we're very talented and I'm glad that the VA chose to showcase that art for us there's also information on the veterans crisis line in the back as well and there are different numbers there to help you get in contact with the people that you need to get in contact with all right so now that we've gotten some of the housekeeping issues out of the way are y'all ready is there any army in the house so I guess y'all are ready now all the branches are y'all ready all right so let's move into the some of the topics that we're gonna be going over some of the topics we're gonna talk about a comments from last year why all of the fuss over women veterans I still keep getting that question asked to me and we're gonna talk about it one more time also what is comprehensive care so at the legislative level sometimes we throw around acronyms and we take for granted that everybody knows what we're talking about when we say comprehensive care pack all of these WH primary care PCPs all of these different acronyms but not everybody knows what they are so we're gonna take a moment to just explain what they are and tie it all together for you the other things we're gonna talk about women veterans legislation the women veterans summit the interim DAV the DAV interim women veterans committee the newsletter that we just released our focus groups on yesterday the commander's action network and then we're gonna have an after action review after you preview the movie and I also have a special guest here from the the New Orleans VA miss Cynthia Marquez who's gonna talk to you about what she does as the women veterans coordinator so I guess I will let her begin before I jump into the PowerPoint Cynthia give her a warm hand please good afternoon everyone welcome to New Orleans and thank you miss love for inviting me my name is Cynthia Marquez I'm with the Department of Veterans Affairs the New Orleans regional office I've been there for 16 years but in this capacity as an outreach coordinator I've been with the VA for seven years in this capacity and I've also worked as the women's veterans coordinator during that entire time there is a passion for working with the women and I must say that our women veterans is a population that is very difficult to corral I wish that when we have events that we can get all of the women to show up because oftentimes you know we is just difficult for them to force to reach out to them and as an outreach coordinator my job is to reach out to all veterans and particularly our women veterans to inform them about VA benefits we want you to know what you have earned as a result of your serving in the military but as a women's veterans coordinator we often talk to veterans who have experienced MST military sexual trauma and it's my job to work with that female veteran or even a male veteran to assist them in filing the claim and most importantly in completing what we call the PTSD stressor form telling their story putting it on paper we want to know what you experienced what happened how it affected you and how it continues to impact negatively impact your life you want to complete that form in such a way that VA clearly understands what happened and how it impacts you and the most important thing about the PTSD stressor form is we try to talk to the veteran ask pointed questions to try to pull out some markers with VA called markers things that we help them to rate that case or into grant service connection I often say to the veteran if service connection is not granted it's not because we don't believe the incident happened it's just that we were not able to cooperate the evidence to to show that it happened and that's the most difficult thing so my job is to ask those difficult questions did you tell anyone did you go to the doctor to say give me a STD test or did you ask for pregnancy test did you ask to be reassigned to another unit after the incident happened those types of questions and yes it is difficult for them to to revisit that and I encourage them and I work with them and sometimes it will take an hour to get that form completed or it may take two hours to get that form completed because it is difficult to bring all of that back up but in the end we've had some positive results were service connection was granted because the time was taken to work with that veteran so as a veteran or coordinator outreach coordinator women's veterans coordinator my job is to work with the veterans to assist them in filing those claims to educate them about their VA benefits and to particularly work very closely with our female veterans and even our male veterans anything else you would like for me to touch bases on very good thank you so much and thank you for your service have a great VA day thank you Cynthia so next we'll have Dr. Brown and she's gonna go over a few things Dr. Brown is actually working with the VA and she is a member of the VA's women's advisory board so next Dr. Brown thank you Ms. Love welcome everyone good afternoon I as Ms. Love indicated I'm a new member of the VA woman veterans advisory committee I was appointed in March of this year and I'm really honored to be on that group of women they have a website the send the the woman veterans advisory committee was established in 1983 believe it or not under public law 9816 the purpose is to assess the needs of women veterans with respect to VA programs such as rehab rehabilitation outreach health care benefits the whole gamma etc. there's a center there's a sheet in the back as Ms. Love had indicated for the center and the hotline is on there if anyone's interested in that or needs any kind of materials on what benefits the VA's provides I just wanted to give you a five minute quick overview of what we talked about in our March meeting we have a VA visit a site visit in September scheduled for a week at Muscogee in Oklahoma where the Center for Women Veterans is specifically going across the nation to visit within a five year period a five year fiscal year period which is tied to the budget the POM budget to look at and assess and address any needs that aren't out there for women veterans specifically so as we heard earlier in the legislative session where we need to look at infrastructure and some of the other programs that are available to women veterans so that's what we're doing as a part of that the first site that was visited was in California we're going to Oklahoma this year and then there's a whole roll out across the nation what I sit on the health subcommittee for this organization as a doctor that's where I felt my abilities were best served Sharanda works extremely closely we work so closely together she is up on not only every women better veterans issue but every health benefits issue that we could ever want we are so fortunate to have her as our representative for DAV she's really called on an awful lot by Kayla Williams the director for the Center for her advice and she does an amazing job at keeping us as DAV members up at the forefront of her thoughts and her processes so some of the things we discussed at the latest meeting in March are under the health benefits we discussed information for quality of care long-term care strategy for women for people that need to be in homes there are currently are no veteran homes for women the we discussed the information on caregiver support for women as you saw in the earlier slides this morning women are look our men women are a little underrepresented in their need for a caregiver we discussed barriers of care that were women-specific we discussed National Guard and Reserve benefits we discussed dental care for homeless and we also discussed on our lesson honorable discharge for women specific to military sexual trauma because a lot of them were dishonorably or other than honorably discharged just because of the trauma of that situation we also discussed resiliency best practices under the benefits side for information we discussed the VA appeal appeals for women women tend to be a little less aggressive with their appeal process and I think all of you are aware of that so we we are specifically trying to address that we also discussed women-specific VA app creation so an app on your smartphone for women specifically for benefits access we reviewed and made suggestions on women prosthetics I have MS and I need to wear heels so if I had a prosthetic I would have to have one that would support a heel and we don't have those currently in the VA very readily available reproductive benefits other than IVF were discussed we also made recommendations on women veterans who are in school but not employed court of appeals we made recommendation on child care and legislative legislation and we're also considering making recommendations on other benefits for women specifically and I would love to talk to any one of you if you have more questions my contact information I've given out and I'll be happy to do that again so thank you again and enjoy the rest of the seminar thank you dr. Brown all right so now we're gonna jump into the PowerPoint and I'll be very quick because we do want to make sure that we have adequate amount of time for the presentation for you so why all the fuss why does DAV make a fuss over women veterans it's easy because we're beautiful no so DAV's leadership has always been supportive of veterans but they realize the inequities that women veterans face so it is our job as an organization to be there to point out these inequities and to help work with VA to fix those and bridge the gap one example I would like to give you is when male veterans visit the clinic most often all of their care can be taken care of in one visit or in inside of one facility but for women veterans that's not always the story sometimes we have to go to different facilities for our gender specific care and also maybe for other care that may not be available in that area especially if you live in a rural area so remember this example because we're gonna come back to it I want to say that VA is making progress in this area but however as I listened to our women yesterday on the focus groups it was evident that more must be done and DAV will continue to be a partner in the efforts to make sure that we're pointing these things out and working with VA to make these things better so let's talk about comprehensive care as I told you earlier sometimes we take for granted that you know what we're talking about when we say comprehensive care so comprehensive care is that is the book definition of it or the handbook definition of comprehensive care but if you want to put it in simple terms it's simply put is complete care in the previous slide I mentioned that male veterans in most cases can receive all of the care that they need within one VA or CBOT and it's not true often for women because of comprehensive care means complete then VA must work to be able to provide this level of care to women in the way in the same way that it does for male veterans so let's look at primary care because all of these things go together so there you see the the handbook definition of primary care these peas are killing me so VHA directive 1330.01 it requires that a full scope of primary care be provided to all eligible veterans so therefore regardless of the number women veterans utilizing a particular healthcare system all sites that offer primary care primary care services must offer comprehensive care to women veterans 1330.01 you're welcome so let's tie these things together so how many of you know what a what a pact is I'm glad I'm talking about it so a pact is not that agreement that you made with your best friend that you will be best friends forever but packed is simply means a patient-aligned care team when you see the WH in front of it it means women's health pack team now I don't want you to get confused these are not unique to only women all veterans have packed teams or can have packed teams however women's health you'll see the WH identifier women health primary patient-aligned care teams are teams that the provider which is a women's health primary care provider and there are members of the team that must also be must also be able to completely perform the roles related to providing comprehensive there's that word again primary care for women so in summary and in response to the first question that I posed to you at the beginning of this presentation why all of the fuss over women veterans until women veterans are able to receive the care that they need in equity and in equity and in comparison to male veterans and in accordance with VHA policy and in a corner in accordance to their own individual health needs DAV will continue to make a fuss as you know DAV team has been heavily involved in with our nation's lawmakers and we engage Congress and we educate them we engage did y'all hear that word earlier today the three E's engage Congress we educate them on DAV priorities and we expect them to not only produce but also pass legislation that has been official to veterans how it all fits together we have spent the last few moments talking about women veterans health care and explaining the basic terms but let's explore what they mean to you the we at the legislative team we interact with VA and VA is a part of the president's cabinet and Congress in an effort to influence help craft and advise lawmakers and other stakeholders on the effects of proposed legislation and what that effect will have on veterans lives so let's look at the 115 Congress these are the bills that are currently out there that are on DAV specific key legislation I want you to take a look at number five that is a women veterans bill that is as 681 in HR 2452 as 681 was introduced by Senator Tester and Representative Estee introduced HR 2452 I would like for you to go on to our commander's action network and review those bills and come familiar with them if you haven't signed up for the commander's action network I want you to do do so and I'm going to tie this all in together in a few moments and tell you why that's very important other bills that have passed the house are the bills listed here I won't go through them all you have a moment if you want to take a picture of the slide please do so at this time because it will take too much time for me to read all of those bills so now we're looking at the women veterans specific bills HR 91 building supported networks for women veterans HR 93 95 and 681 Senate bill 681 and HR 2452 again that's the Debra Samson Act all of these bills are listed on our website and you do have access to them if you visit the commander's action network where do you need to go to get information on the bills did y'all go to sleep commander's action network so let's talk about what all of this means the comprehensive care our role at the legislative headquarters and your role at home remember the engage we need you active at home and get in engaging your local leaders there we need you to educate them on DAV bills and issues that DAV is concerned with we want you to expect them to take action we need you to all expect them to not only introduce this legislation but to make sure that it passes if it doesn't pass it does nothing to benefit the veterans that it was written to serve how can you do this there's your tool right there the benefits protection team are here to help you you need to find out who your benefit benefit protection team leader is within your state and become familiar with them and work with them to work with DAV so that we all can speak on one voice when we speak about veterans issues the commander's action network the can yes you can make a difference so we need you to utilize this as a tool if they're in the commander's action network you will find all of their bills that DAV is following as well as where we stand on those bills and you can also reach out to your elected official on the website and you don't even have to know exactly who that is because it will automatically populate for you so we want to make it as easy as possible for you to become engaged with your leaders and educate your leaders and expect them to take action I keep saying that because I want you out again for me with the threes and the most important thing about the benefits protection team I mean not the benefits protection team but the commander's action network is that you do not have to be a member to utilize the tool so if you have neighbors that live next to you if your children are interested in been in veterans issues then you want to sign them up and educate them and and have them utilize the commander's action network so now I want you to meet my interim women veterans committee Joanne Martinez which is our chair it's always one of Dr. Brown it's always another Mr. Elder Jackson army and Rachel Fredrick's so so I want to tell you a little bit about these these individuals here before you they work very hard with me as you know this is a volunteer position and to be up here they give me one at least one or two hours once a month to talk about women veterans and issues we come up with ways to reach you we want to interact with you we want to reach you on social networks we do a lot of things to try to spread the word on women veterans issues but we need to hear from you we discuss women veterans issues with the leadership and we provide our information to the adjutant and the commander for their advisement one thing that we were able to accomplish although we've accomplished a little bit of things here and there the major thing that we were able to accomplish this year was the women veterans newsletter how many of you have seen the newsletter very few and we're working to fix that problem the women that attended the focus groups on yesterday we will be working to get you a copy of that newsletter when we get back home for the rest of you I want you to nag your department adjutants and your department commanders to pass that information on so that you can receive that information from them I also want to take this time again to introduce doc Julie she told me to stop calling her by her full name so Julie she is the producer of the journey to normal and she's going to be here to talk to you about that in just a few moments I also want to give you some announcements so we have the 2017 national women veterans summit coming up here in Houston Texas August the 24th through the 25th so if you have not registered you need to do so as soon as possible because it will be sold out they were very close to selling out that event so members of DAV's interim women veterans committee will be there I will be there representing DAV as well and your national senior vice commander will be there to represent DAV so how can you spread the word social media right now tweet I need you to take a picture back there after this seminar is over take a picture back there by the I am one sign all women veterans take a picture by the I am one sign and then I want you to tweet DAV women veterans all one word hashtag DAV women veterans and then you can interact with DAV myself and if you interact with me you will find the rest of the team on Twitter as well and you can interact with them now without further ado I will bring to you the producer of journey to normal miss Julie Herrera hi there I'm I'm Julie I am just so thrilled to be with all of you today I can't thank you enough for taking the time to be here to see the room filled is just an amazing experience so thank you so much for making this a priority for your afternoon I'm very grateful to Shiranda to Joy Elam to the legislative team to the the women's committee here and to all of DAV for being such wonderful partners with our organization journey to normal you are a part of just an amazing group with such powerful informed passionate people who are working tirelessly on your behalf and the beautiful part is how well you all work together so to see you here is just it's a thrill and I thank you for taking the time to be here I am thrilled today to finally share with you our completed feature length documentary journey to normal women of war come home today you're gonna hear from eight families who will candidly share what deployment and reintegration look like from the inside out I was blessed to interview over a hundred women during my time in regional command east and Afghanistan Afghanistan and we selected eight to follow for two and a half years back home we didn't know where their stories would lead so what you're seeing today is life as it actually unfolded now this film invites reflection and our mission at journey to normal is to cultivate conversation around its content now unfortunately as as life happens our time today is very limited but I hope this will only be the beginning of our conversation together now I'll be the first to tell you I will still never really know all that the military experiences overseas or back here because I've been living it completely differently than you all have lived it and I think that the same will be true for most civilians but I believe that understanding grows first from bearing witness so we shall do that together here today now there are several ways that you can share feedback with us on the film and when I say that your feedback is very important I can't stress that enough we need to document support for the film if we're to convince distributors that they should release it to the general public so your feedback is going to help us to convince them so I thank you in advance for that when you each came in today you should have received this sheet which is a questionnaire that you all have if you don't have them raise your hand and we're going to see that you get them so we've got some in the back so we're gonna we're gonna make sure that we get everybody a sheet and if you could fill this out and leave it on the table before you leave today so that I can gather them that would be immensely immensely helpful you can then find us online at journey to normal org on Facebook a journey to normal and on Twitter a journey to normal that information as well as our email address and our mailing address are at the bottom of those forms in addition I'm gonna leave a stack of my business cards on the table so on the way out please feel free to take one I would love to hear from you love to hear your feedback and love to hear your ideas about where we might go next with the film so without any further ado we're going to dim the lights we're going to start the film we've got 90 minutes and we will see you on the other side thank you so much