Nov. 4--A pair of health care workers dedicated to improving access for
Indian veterans seeking medical treatment in Montana will testify before the
Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs this week.
The two Montana advocates will travel to Washington, D.C., for Thursday's
hearing to share their successes and lingering needs while the VA aims to
improve services for Indian and rural vets across the country.
Kevin Howlett, who directs Tribal Health for the Confederated Salish and
Kootenai Tribes, will testify at Thursday's hearing, along with Buck
Richardson, the minority program coordinator with the Rocky Mountain
Healthcare Network.
Richardson, who splits time between Denver and Helena and often works
from Fort Harrison, said Montana's progress in providing better health care to
Indian vets has become a national model.
"One of the biggest challenges our Indian veterans have is access,"
Richardson said Tuesday. "The VA committee wants to know what we've done with
(Indian Health Services), and to increase health care access to Indian vets
and rural vets."
Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., a member of the VA committee and author of the
Rural Veterans Health Care Improvement Act, requested the hearing last month.
"With this hearing, we'll be able to dig deeper into the challenges
facing Montana's Indian veterans and how we can better get them the care
they've earned," Tester said. "It's never been more important for these
different agencies to be talking and working together effectively."
In particular, Tester said, the committee will look closely at the
relationship between the VA and Indian Health Services, or IHS, and their
performance when delivering health care to vets living on reservations.
More than 4,500 Native Americans are enrolled in the VA. The actual
number of Indian vets in the state, however, is believed to be much higher.
Per capita, Montana has one of the nation's highest veteran populations
in the country.
Richardson said former Montana Adjutant General Gene Prendergast
challenged health care advocates in 2001 by asking them to improve access and
services to Montana's Indian veterans.
The group responded to the challenge by training nine tribal veteran
representatives, or TVRs, in Montana. More than 227 TVRs have since been
trained and now serve in other states including Alaska, Alabama, New Mexico
and Oklahoma.
"We realized back in 2001 that there was a huge disconnect between the
organizations," Richardson said. "A lot of Indian vets didn't know what their
benefits were."
Richardson said several other improvements are still being made to
increase access and awareness for Indian vets.
Among them, he cited a growing telemed program, which allows Indian vets
to speak with counselors from the University of Colorado.
The program is up and running on five Montana reservations, and
Richardson is currently working to get similar sites online by year's end at
the Flathead and Blackfeet reservations.
Around 4,000 DVDs focused on post-traumatic stress disorder and available
treatment are also being distributed to every VA and IHS facility in the
nation, Richardson said.
"The VA committee will ask us to discuss some of the services and
cooperation that we've been able to create here over the last 10 years between
the tribes and IHS," Richardson said. "They'll ask us how we're bringing
increased services and benefits to our Indian vets."
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