2019-2020 Gold Humanism Honor Society National Project
This Quality Improvement Project addresses healthcare disparities through the identification of veteran status and associated risk for unique employment-related illnesses.
Our overarching goal for this initiative is to encourage physicians to correctly identify those veterans already in their patient panels, and eventually become comfortable obtaining the necessary history to provide effective healthcare using all applicable sources available for this population.
- Academic and community clinicians provide a large percentage of healthcare for veterans, and the trend towards community care will continue to accelerate due to outsourcing by the VA.
- Standard medical education does not provide ample understanding of the unique healthcare needs of service members and their families, both during and after their tour of service.
- A lack of knowledge by community providers about how to access services specifically available for this population leads to many missed opportunities for care.
- The lack of education on the topic of veteran’s health leads to a failure to identify and effectively care for our service members living side by side with civilian neighbors.