How do you plan on addressing these issues through the Center of Excellence for Sexual Health?
Even severely impaired individuals can still enjoy intimacy and sexual expression when the appropriate education and support is available. However, current military sexual health initiatives routinely fail to meaningfully address sexual health and intimate relationship concerns related to deployment, disability, hospitalization, and rehabilitation. TRICARE (which is the military healthcare plan) specifically excludes coverage of therapy, treatment, and supplies related to sexual disorders.
Consistent with our goal of raising the national dialogue around important sexual health issues, The Center of Excellence for Sexual Health, through our Disabilities, Chronic Conditions and Sexual Health Program, is working to put sexual health related issues for our injured and disabled service personnel and their partners on the radar.
We provided written testimony detailing the need to provide comprehensive sexual health care to Bob Dole and Donna Shalala's bipartisan Presidential Committee on Veterans’ Care.
We are actively educating the media and advocating for major media outlets to cover these military related sexual health issues in a meaningful way. We have convened a multidisciplinary advisory panel that includes members that have served in the recent conflicts, past wars, and who have first hand experience of these issues. Together we are planning to host the first national conference on this topic, Promoting Sexual Health & Healing: A Call to Address the Unaddressed Concerns of Wounded Heroes and their Partners in Washington, DC in 2008. The conference will reach out to policy makers, leaders of organizations, and funders from institutions like the DOD, the VA, Congress, the media, AMA, APA, veteran/family associations/advocates, and other healthcare provider organizations. There will be a significant focus on traumatic brain injuries, PTSD, combat/operational stress reaction, and other “invisible” but potentially disabling conditions that can negatively affect sexual health.
Some people would say that sexuality is too private and personal for doctors and hospitals to be dealing with. That the government's responsibility is to fix people up and send them on their way. How would you respond to someone who thinks that there are more important things for us to be paying attention to when it comes to wounded soldiers than their sex lives? It is true that there are a lot of competing priorities when it comes to treating our wounded military personnel, that sexuality is a very private matter, and that sometimes we have to stop the bleeding first. However, this does not excuse us from providing comprehensive sexual health care - care that addresses the biological, psychological, social, emotional, relational, and even spiritual dimensions of sexuality - to our wounded heroes who risked their lives in the service of our country. When sexual health is understood to touch every part of a person's life, when three-quarters of military related suicides are attributed to problems with intimate relationships, when divorce rates for those who serve in the military are significantly higher than the general population's, when intimate partner violence is significantly higher for those who serve in the military, we see that it is not just the government's responsibility to provide sexual health care but a moral imperative.
This sounds comprehensive and really necessary, but it also sounds like it’s going to require a major shift in thinking on the part of the military. I’m wondering what sort of reception you’ve had to this initiative, both from leaders in the military and soldiers. I can see military personnel being happy to have these resources and support, but how comfortable are military leaders with sexuality? After all, when one thinks of the current administration one doesn’t always think: sexual health.
Actually our introduction to the folks at the Coalition to Salute America’s Heroes was made through a top level military official. Also, I can say that our written testimony to the Presidential Committee on Veterans’ Care was heard and positively acknowledged. Lastly I will say that we have shared these issues with the appropriate party directly at Walter Reed [Army Medical Center] and that person has been very supportive. I am always reassured at the level of support we receive as we make these issues more widely known. The biggest hurdle is usually getting people to understand sexual health as a construct that is much greater than what people do with their genitals.
