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VOL. 3/ISSUE 16
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2015
To care for her who shall have borne the battle Patrick McCallister FOR VETERAN VOICE
patrick.mccallister@yahoo.com
This is a continuation of the occasional series, Inside the VA, a closer look at the Department of Veterans Affairs’ three functions, the Veterans Health Administration, the Veterans Benefits Administration and the National Cemetery Administration. This week Veteran Voice looks into the Women Veterans Health Program. When the Department of Veterans Affairs opens the new Orlando hospital at the Lake Nona Medical City in spring, it’ll have the largest women’s clinic in the nation, said Mike Strickler, public affairs officer. This reflects what’s happening throughout Florida and the nation. There are more women serving in uniform, and more women veterans tapping VA healthcare, said Rosemary Balaguer, Women Veterans Health Care Program manager at the West Palm Beach VA Medical Center. “Today women (make up) about 14.5 percent of all active duty and 18 percent of all National Guard and reserve,” she said Every VA medical center has a women’s clinic. “The Women Veterans Program is a comprehensive program,” Balaguer said. “In one area we try to provide all the medical care, psychiatric care and primary care.” Although there are records of women warriors in American history since before the Revolutionary War, women have officially served in the U.S. Armed Forces only since the Spanish-American War in 1898. An outbreak of typhoid forced Congress to allow women to volunteer as nurses. The Army Nurse Corps formed in 1901, and women have consistently served in the military ever since. Women have also done an increasing number of jobs as the nature of war has changed and increasingly scrubbed the concept of a frontline. Mili-
Photo courtesy of the West Palm Beach VA Medical Center Veteran Anna Marie Torres awaits an appointment at the Women Veterans Health Care Program at the West Palm Beach VA Medical Center. tary records show that there were about 10,000 women deployed to Europe during World War I. About 41,000 were deployed in operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. That about quadrupled in operations Enduring and Iraqi Freedom — more than 200,000 women served in those operations. Back in 1994, Congress mandated that the VA form the Center for Women Veterans and every medical center to have a women’s clinic. At the time, about 4 to 5 percent of veterans enrolled in the Veterans Health Administration, VHA, were women. They now make up about 7 to 9 percent of the VA’s patients. “As the women’s veteran population is increasing, the male population is decreasing,” Balaguer said. Nationally there are about 1.7 million women veterans. Overall there are about 22 million veterans. By 2035 women will make up about 15 percent of the veterans’
population. Additionally, women veterans are younger than the men. Almost half of all women veterans have served since August 1990, the Gulf War era to the present. Florida has about 1.6 million veterans. The Florida Department of Veterans Affairs reports that about 170,000 are women. In other words, about one in 10 veterans in the Sunshine State are women. Balaguer said that there are about 10,500 women veterans in the seven counties that the West Palm medical center covers, St. Lucie, Martin, Indian River, Palm Beach, Glades, Hendry and Okeechobee. “There’s a little under 4,000 that are actually using the services,” she said. In 2009, the last year that there’s official reporting for, only about 32 percent
See WOMEN’S page 3