Veterans Affairs Secretary Honored

At last month’s Assembly meeting in Washington, D.C., Assembly Speaker Albert Gaw, M.D. (left), presents an award to Anthony Principi, secretary of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Principi received the Speaker’s Award for his long “commitment to ensuring that all veterans have access to the highest-quality health care and benefits to which they are entitled,” said Gaw.

Gaw cited Principi’s efforts to ensure that Persian Gulf War veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder receive necessary care and his development of a program in which the VA “purchases and manages community housing for seriously mentally ill veterans who are engaged in therapeutic work programs.”

In accepting the award, Principi stressed, “Every VA patient with a mental illness has the right to compassionate and effective treatment for his or her disease.” The VA, he added, cannot “shunt veterans off to one side of the social tracks simply because the effects of their illnesses may make others uncomfortable.”

He noted that in 2001 the VA provided mental health care to nearly 900,000—or 20 percent—of the country’s veterans.