The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is now putting \u201cmajor emphasis\u201d on women veterans, a group where the agency \u201cfailed in the past,\u201d according to Dr. James E. Hastings.<\/p>\n
Hastings, director of the VA Pacific Islands Health Care System, said in an interview that the VA is now recognizing its obligation to take care of the special needs of women veterans.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I can tell you is that all VA facilities are making a major effort to recognize the fact that they need to increase the services that they\u2019re offering women veterans,\u201d Hastings told Saipan Tribune.<\/p>\n
Hastings came to Saipan last month for a town hall meet attended by veterans and their family members on Nov. 16 at the American Memorial Park Visitors Center Theater in Garapan.<\/p>\n
During his brief visit, Hastings was joined by VA Pacific Islands Health Care System\u2019s Andrew Dahlburg, Craig Oswald, and Michael C. Soucie.<\/p>\n
Hastings, who also chairs the Department of Medicine at the University of Hawaii School of Medicine, said part of the VA\u2019s efforts to make women \u201cfeel comfortable\u201d and \u201ctaken care of\u201d when going into VA facilities is offering mammography services for these women veterans.<\/p>\n
According to Hastings, the nature of military is now \u201cchanging,\u201d with about 15 percent of the deployed force are women.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re generating more female veterans now faster than we ever have before. I\u2019m not sure the VA is ready for it but we\u2019re trying very, very hard to do it but it\u2019s a culture change for us,\u201d said Hastings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is now putting \u201cmajor emphasis\u201d on women veterans, a group where the agency \u201cfailed in the past,\u201d according to Dr. James E. Hastings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-157105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157105\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}