Paralyzed Veterans of America

Good morning, everyone. Carl Blake, thanks for that kind introduction. More importantly, thank you for your selfless service on behalf of your brothers- and sisters-in-arms.

And let me give a quick shout out to Charlie Brown, Robert Thomas, and members of your Executive Committee. You are the leaders who make this great organization run, who bring our partnership to life, and who challenge us to make that partnership all it can be, including by holding us to account.

And to the caregivers and spouses here this morning: thank you. When your loved ones served, you served alongside them. Their sacrifice has been your sacrifice. And your service continues to this day—and every day. You are the backbone of the care team for your veteran, as critical to the care outcomes we seek as our docs and nurses.

Let me tell you about Army Veteran Dillon Cannon. While on patrol in Iraq, a sniper’s bullet ripped through Dillon’s neck … barely missing his artery but shattering his vertebrae and causing swelling in his spine. As a result, Dillon was paralyzed from the waist down. Following rehabilitation, Dillon told a Vocational Counselor at the Houston VA how much he loves racecars. So they set Dillon up with an interview at the Houston Motor Speedway Resort.

Dillon was hired on the spot. He thrived in his new job, but what happened next was life-changing. The shop’s owner—a Vietnam Veteran—decided to buy some modified racecars with hand controls. And he asked if Dillon wanted to start racing. With Dillon’s help, they started a charity, a charity to teach disabled Vets how to race. Dillon says that “racing is a blast.” “But,” he says, “I love to get other Veterans down to the track.” Veterans helping Veterans, long after they take off the uniform. There’s nothing better than that. It’s what PVA’s all about.

Now, I tell this story for two reasons. The first is to just note that nothing, not even a sniper’s bullet, could stop Dillon from pursuing his lifelong dream—shoot, the lifelong dream of every American kid—to be a racecar driver. But the second is to recognize how critically important access to adaptive vehicles is. Not just for racecar drivers. For everybody.

Still, for far too long, Vets with SCI/D were limited to using VA’s auto grant only once over the course of their lifetime. There are countless stories of Vets driving hundreds of thousands of miles until their car broke down because they were priced out of buying a new car given the astronomically high add-on costs for adaptive features. I’m happy that this law was updated this past January with the AUTO for Veterans Act, a cause you championed.

Now, eligible Vets can get a new adaptive vehicle once every ten years. Last Monday, we published interim guidance for Vets to begin applying for these grants under the new law. These grants will help Vets preserve their freedom, their independence, and their mobility while ensuring they can travel safely to and from work, to appointments, and to engagements and obligations with friends and family. Please, apply for this grant today and help us spread the word.

Updating this important program is one way that PVA has important impact on the lives of its members—and on us at VA. But it is just one. The impact that you make on behalf of Veterans every single day is inspiring. This is what our work is all about: getting the job done for Veterans, together. Whether that means providing Vets with the best care in the world, benefits they’ve earned, or a dignified final resting place that honors their service and sacrifice.

With your help, VA is delivering more care and more benefits to more Vets like Dillon than at any other time in our nation’s history. Vets had over 115 million clinical encounters in the past year, with nearly 40 million in-person VA appointments, over 31 million tele-health appointments, and 38 million community care appointments.

When it comes to benefits, we set a record last year with over 1.7 million claims completed. And we’re on track to break that record this year. We still can, and still must, be better—and do better—for the Veterans we serve. So we’re committed to collaborating even more effectively with PVA, to build on what’s working, and to fix what’s not. Here are some of the places we can most use your help and your voice.

First, the PACT Act—the new law for Vets’ toxic exposure. Since President Biden signed the toxic exposure law, Veterans and survivors have filed over 1.5 million VA claims—nearly 30% more than the same period last year. Among those are more than 500,000 claims for toxic exposure-related benefits. And over 3 million Vets have received toxic exposure screenings with their VA health care providers. As a result, Vets, their families, and survivors have received over $1 billion in earned PACT Act-related benefits to date.

This can end up being one of the biggest expansions of Veteran benefits in history. It has the potential to deliver care and benefits to millions of Vets and their survivors, bring generations of new Vets into VA health care, and increase the health care benefits of many more. But it will only be so if we—all of us, working together—get Vets to apply.

So, apply for your toxic exposure benefits right now. Don’t wait. And re-apply if you’ve ever been denied before for the VA care and benefits you’ve earned. Listen, applying on or before August 9th of this year means benefits will be backdated to August 10th of last year, the day President Biden signed the bill into law. Finally, help us spread the word. Tell Vets to learn more about the PACT Act and apply anytime by visiting VA.gov/PACT or by calling 1-800-MY-VA-411. 1-800-698-2411.

Another place we have to deepen our partnership is on our number one clinical priority—suicide prevention. All of us have to be there for Vets when it matters most, especially in times of crisis. This is particularly true for Vets with SCI/D—feelings of sadness or depression are normal reactions to the loss and stress which often occur after an SCI/D diagnosis. Vets need and deserve suicide prevention solutions that meet them where they are, rather than taking a one-size-fits-all approach.

So I want to quickly run through five of the solutions we’re continuing to implement this year.

First, we recently announced a final round of prizes through our Mission Daybreak challenge—totaling nearly $20 million across 40 teams. These teams are developing innovative new solutions to save Veterans’ lives.

Second, Staff Sergeant Parker Gordon Fox Suicide Prevention Grants are getting resources to local suicide prevention services, grassroots programs run by people who know Vets best.

Third, VA launched Suicide Prevention 2.0. At VA—like every health care system in the country—we are badly in need of more trained mental health professionals. Suicide Prevention 2.0 is designed to recruit, hire, and train more than 100 licensed mental health providers serving Vets at high risk of suicide through telehealth.

Fourth, we’re significantly expanding VA coverage through the COMPACT Act—opening doors of emergency care when Vets need it most. That means access to any health care facility—VA or not—for free emergency mental health care.

And fifth, we’ve brought on over 1,300 peer specialists. Our peer specialists are all Vets. They’re trained to use their personal experiences with their own recovery to help their struggling fellow-Vets reconnect, find a sense of belonging, and access resources at VA and in their communities. 

Now, I know that’s a lot. But suicide prevention takes all of us pulling together in the same direction to save lives. And with all this work and more, saving lives is exactly what we’re going to do. Together, we will do it. There’s nothing more important than that.

Now, let’s talk about how our partnership can ensure we reach more Vets … with access to the world-class health care they deserve. We recognize that Vets with SCI/D have complex needs requiring personalized approaches to care across varied settings—in-home, in the community, via telehealth, and at VA Medical Centers. I have heard some of the challenges Vets with SCI/D face when seeking care in the community. Even something as fundamental as being weighed is made difficult if the facility isn’t fitted with the right equipment or its people aren’t properly trained. That’s not acceptable.

As I discussed with Carl last month, I worry a lot about what I am seeing in community care. About a third of the care we provide now is provided in the community. And what I have seen since I got here is an almost month-by-month increase in the amount of care that is going to the community. The trend is unmistakable. Now, this is happening for a lot of reasons, including the pandemic, VA’s responsibilities under the MISSION Act, and vacancies across the country—particularly in rural communities. I will get to what we are doing on vacancies in a minute and I recognize that this challenge—the challenge of ensuring that we don’t turn VA into a healthcare company that just pays the bills for care provided by someone else—is uniquely my challenge.

But I need your help, your continued vigilance, and your demands for accountability from us and from Congress in ensuring we remain the preeminent provider of care, especially for Vets with SCI/D. VA’s SCI/D System of Care is unique—it is lifelong, integrated primary and specialty care for Veterans with traumatic and non-traumatic injuries. There is simply no equivalent. No one does it as well as we do. It is not something we can refer to the community. And we will not allow anyone to think we can.

So that is why we’re investing in modern facilities to expand access to VA care. Thanks again to the toxic exposure law, we have new authorizations and funding for 31 major leases to improve access for over 4.5 million Vets. We opened 17 new CBOCs last year providing better access for 2.8 million Vets, and this year we’re awarding and completing significant major construction projects that will serve millions more. This will improve access to care for all Vets, including Vets with SCI/D.

Currently, there is only one VA center with SCI/D Long-Term Care beds west of the Mississippi. That will soon change. Two of this year’s major construction projects will expand SCI/D Long-Term Care capacity significantly. One is at the VA North Texas SCI/D Center, where they’re adding over 171,000 square feet of space and doubling the number of SCI/D beds. All of those beds will be for SCI/D Long-Term Care. The second is at VA San Diego, where they’ll add a 197,000 square foot building with 20 new SCI/D long-term beds alongside a 33-bed Community Living Center. Thank you for the dedicated expertise offered by the National PVA architecture team. PVA is a key partner in making these construction projects a reality.

Let me turn to VA’s workforce. Across the health care industry, labor shortages are constraining in-person services. To increase care and support for Veterans with SCI/D, over the past 18 months VA has expanded SCI/D Home Care, Veteran Directed Care, Home-Based Primary Care, and Home Health Aide services.

We’re also investing in the people we hire and retain here at VA. We’re increasing hiring, quickly onboarding staff, and incentivizing retention. Overall, we’ve onboarded over 27,000 new people at VHA this year, on our way to our goal of 52,000 new VHA employees. In fact, we hired more people at VHA in the first quarter of this year than in any previous year. We’ve hired 5,473 Registered Nurses, 1,009 Licensed Practical Nurses, and 1,524 Nursing Assistants, more hires in these three critical occupations than at any time in the past 20 years. These selfless public servants are the very heart and soul of everything we do at VA.

Now reaching more Vets means serving all Vets. All Vets. We at VA will stop at nothing serve every Veteran as well as they have served us. This is true for women Vets—our fastest growing cohort of Veterans—and for women Vets with SCI/D. Over the past ten years, we have seen the population of women Vets with SCI/D double. But we have not always done enough to earn their trust or meet their unique needs.

We’re committed to providing women Vets the full range of health services they need for their health and well-being; reproductive health, contraception and fertility services, family building, gender-specific cardiac care, and more. So our Women’s Health and SCI/D experts are working hard to ensure that we are providing services for women Vets with SCI/D in the most appropriate environment.

Breast cancer screening is particularly important. Thanks to your advocacy, the MAMMO Act was signed into law last June, and it’ll go a long way in addressing mammography accessibility for Vets with SCI/D. And we’re making progress on implementing this law—including the launch of a screening dashboard that displays the breast cancer screening rates for Vets with SCI/D and amputations. Right now, screening rates for women Vets with SCI/D are better than rates for the general women Vet population.

But we still have work to do, and a long journey ahead, to build trust of women Vets. We’re starting to see results from these efforts. There are good indications that women Vets are trusting us at higher levels. Trust scores are rising—too slowly, but steadily—from 81% in 2017 to 86% today. That’s good, but those scores are 4 points below average, and nearly 5 points below male Vets’ trust scores. We need to keep working together to ensure that women Veterans with SCI/D receive the care and support they deserve.

So, those are a few places where we can build on the life-changing differences we are already making, together, for Vets, and some of the places we can most use your help, your voice, your advice, and your partnership. Because there’s nothing we can’t do, together. Here’s what I mean.

Many of you know Dr. Rory Cooper. Dr. Cooper’s an Army Vet with SCI/D who’s devoted his career to serving his fellow disabled Vets. He’s a PVA distinguished professor at the University of Pittsburgh. He’s a world-class athlete with a Paralympics bronze medal and over 150 medals in the National Veterans Wheelchair Games. And he’s the founder and director of the Human Engineering Research Laboratories—a collaboration between VA, PVA, and the University of Pittsburgh—where Dr. Cooper leads research on cutting-edge technologies like assistive robots, brain-machine interfaces, virtual reality, robotic wheelchairs that climb stairs, and more. 

Later today at VA, Dr. Cooper will be recognized for a lifetime of service as one of the nation’s top scientists dedicated to Veteran health care. Here’s my point. Vets like Dr. Cooper exemplify the enormous good we can accomplish for Vets, together. In Dr. Cooper’s words, together we can help “Veterans and people with disabilities find and pursue their dreams.”

I look forward to continuing our work together, and I look forward to your questions. May God bless all of you, our servicemembers protecting our country today, and our Veterans, their families, caregivers, and survivors.