Dr. Forrest Faison, the Navy's 38th Surgeon General spoke astatine NEOMED for the VITALS bid astir the wellness of our veterans.
ROOTSTOWN, Ohio — Retired U.S. Navy Vice Admiral C. Forrest Faison, III M.D. is the Navy's 38th Surgeon General. He's besides a Rocky River autochthonal and antecedently had been elder vice president for probe & innovation/chief healthcare strategy serviceman astatine Cleveland State University.
Thursday, helium spoke astatine the Northeast Ohio Medical University (NEOMED) arsenic portion of the VITALS Visionary Health Leadership successful Action series.
He challenged students to commencement reasoning of ways to not lone assistance the nation's veterans, but besides susceptible populations.
"In Iraq and Afghanistan we had the highest combat endurance successful recorded history, and we person information going backmost to the revolutionary war, if you had a survivable wounded connected the battlefield, you had a 97 percent accidental of survival," Dr. Faison said.
It brought location astir 152,000 wounded warriors, including those with post-traumatic accent upset (PTSD), those with traumatic encephalon wounded and amputees.
Dr. Faison says contempt the federation sparing nary disbursal to assistance them betterment and rehabilitate successful subject hospitals and VA centers, surviving and thriving are 2 antithetic things.
22,000 veterans are homeless.
36,500 veterans person substance usage issues.
25% person suicidal thoughts and portion rates person somewhat decreased, it's inactive not enough.
"Every azygous time 20 veterans termination themselves, each azygous day," Dr. Faison said.
The shortage of intelligence wellness resources successful some the subject and civilian assemblage is captious arsenic well.
"If you person untreated PTSD you person a 200% accrued hazard of processing a chronic illness due to the fact that you don't instrumentality attraction of yourself," Dr. Faison said.
He added that successful astir cases, VA disablement benefits aren't paying a surviving wage and haven't kept up with inflation. Less than 1 percent of the federation participates successful the Armed Forces, but we beryllium connected them for securing our state and the world.
But the wellness issues facing them is simply a microcosm of the federation arsenic a whole.
"What is our nationalist program for immoderate of our astir susceptible people? We walk much connected healthcare than immoderate different federation connected world and yet we don't person the champion outcomes and there's wide variability depending connected whether oregon not you're insured, depending connected your means, depending connected your zip code," Dr. Faison added.
To ticker Dr. Faison's VITALS presentation, click HERE
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