The Louisiana Department of Veterans Affairs and the Louisiana Center for Health Innovation at UL-Lafayette have teamed up to do a comprehensive survey to learn more about the challenges veterans are facing. Gabriella Wilson is the director of the Louisiana Center for Health Innovation and says they want to assess the needs of veterans.
“This would be the first one ever done in Louisiana at the state level, where we are not only interviewing the Veterans but also surveying the family as well as those employers who work with veterans. So, this way we can capture the needs of everybody.”
The findings will lead to improvements in services and support systems for veterans and their families. Wilson says there are three different surveys and each survey is designed to capture the real-life experiences and challenges veterans face.
“Wellness and mental health are also influenced by how the community helps veterans and their families. So, we are also looking at housing, social services, support, and education.”
Wilson says the surveys are open until June 15th.
“We want to make sure that we include the data that we have that is publicly available. We include all of this as part of our report. The goal is for this report to be released to the public by the end of November.”
The surveys can be found at lchi.louisiana.edu.
