Seeking Women’s Health Justice: Critical issues in Women Veterans’ Healthcare

What are our current and future women veterans needs, and how are we meeting those needs in a range of disciplines? We will be focusing on the critical issues facing disabled women veterans at the VA and the challenges women veterans face on returning to civilian life. As well as the new Disabled American Veteran (DAV) report on women veterans’ mental health and suicide.

We have 3 speakers: Suzanne Gordon, Crystal Bland and Micaila Britto.

Our lead speaker and author Suzanne Gordon will speak on providing complex care for women veterans and what VA is doing about it. In “Our Veterans”, Suzanne Gordon explores the physical, emotional, social, economic, and psychological impact of military service and the problems that veterans face when they return to civilian life.

In “Wounds of War”, Suzanne Gordon draws on years of observational research to describe how the VHA does a better job than private sector institutions offering primary and geriatric care, mental health and home care services, and support for patients nearing the end of life. In the unusual culture of solidarity between patients and providers that the VHA has fostered, Gordon finds a working model for higher-quality health care and a much-needed alternative to the practice of for-profit medicine.

Crystal and Micaila are disabled veterans and advocates for women veterans who will speak on their medical and mental health needs, and how the VA responded to their needs.

Suzanne Gordon is an award-winning journalist and author. She has written for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Nation, The Washington Monthly, The American Prospect, The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, JAMA, The Annals of Internal Medicine, The BMJ, and others. She is the co-editor of the Culture and Politics of Health Care Work series at Cornell University Press.

Suzanne is the author or co-author of 11 books including Life Support: Three Nurses on the Front Lines, Beyond the Checklist: What Else Healthcare Can Learn from Aviation Teamwork and Safety. Her latest book is Wounds of War: How the VA Delivers Health, Healing, and Hope to the Nation’s Veterans. She is also of The Battle for Veterans’ Healthcare: Dispatches from the Frontlines of Policy Making and Patient Care.

Suzanne is the co-editor of eight books, including Collaborative Caring: Stories and Reflections on Teamwork in Healthcare (January 2015), edited with David L. Feldman and Michael Leonard and First Do Less Harm: Confronting Inconvenient Problems in Patient Safety, edited with Ross Koppel (May 2012). She is co-author of From Silence to Voice: What Nurses Know and Must Communicate to the Public. She recently edited When Chicken Soup Isn’t Enough: Stories of Nurses Standing Up For Themselves, Their Patients and Their Profession.

Suzanne is an Assistant Adjunct Professor at the UCSF School of Nursing and an Affiliated scholar with the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine’s Wilson Centre. With Lisa Hayes, she has written a play about patient safety and teamwork entitled Bedside Manners. Suzanne is the Senior Policy Fellow at the Veterans’ Health Care Policy Institute.

Crystal Bland currently serves as a National Representative Attorney for American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) District 7 representing federal employee unions in Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. With 20+ years of federal government experience, she focuses on employment and labor relations and government service implementation. Crystal previously worked at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)as a HUD Community Planning and Development Representative, addressing housing instability and homelessness. She actively engages in activism, philanthropy, and social justice causes, with a mission to end homelessness in Chicago and nationwide. Crystal volunteers with Habitat for Humanity, serves on community organization boards, and is dedicated to equitable provision of government services. She served in the US Army for eight years, completing three combat tours in Iraq. Crystal holds a Bachelor’s degree in Network and Communications Management and a Juris Doctor from John Marshall Law School. Currently residing in the Chicago south suburbs, she cherishes spending time with family and friends.

Micaila Britto is a Marine Corps veteran, photographer, women veterans’ advocate, and director of veterans’ services. She joined the United States Marine Corps upon graduating from high school, and was first stationed in Okinawa, Japan as an aircraft launch and recovery specialist.

Micaila is on the steering committee, and an active member, of the Massachusetts Women Veterans’ Network, as well as being on the board and president of the South Coast region of the Massachusetts Veterans’ Service Officers Association. Her work is dedicated to assisting women veter…