Creating Diversity
Elder Veterans and Health Care Services

The focus of my dissertation is toward the aged American population, particularly the elderly veterans. I will be considering the type and quality of care they receive for the remainder of their old age. Currently, there are programs and health services targeted toward that group. I am interested in the approaches and activities of such programs and other similar programs that might need to be implemented through congressional deliberation and approval. Gerontology is receiving significant attention from researchers in the American space due to the steady incline of the aged American population.

Through the evaluation of certain tendencies within the group of elderly veterans, intervention measures can be provided. Known risk-factors within this group include mental illnesses and war-related disabilities/amputations, which are potential triggers for suicidal behavior/tendency with increasing age (Reid, 2018). Also, there is an increasing sense of hopelessness associated with the care facilities/provisions for the elderly American population. The concept of the American dream at that stage of life has significantly been altered and replaced with an uneasiness about affording the cost of housing, health care, and other necessities.

The aged veterans, who are a significant minority of this group, are even more vulnerable. It is on the premise of advising on this inconvenient situation that this research work is based. This research considers that the United States government can ensure proper social welfare for these sets of individuals that served its purpose during their youth. The limitation is, however, in the aspect of insight into the lived experiences and expectations of this group. Be it the Gulf or Afghanistan war; there is a significant mental and physical toll of war and military occupation on soldiers. These conditions of instability tend to worsen with increasing age, as is likely in veterans of the WWII, Korean, and Vietnam military occupations. Given the diversity of modern care delivery, design, and intervention programs, the lack of adequate care services/programs for our veterans (of any war) is considered unacceptable.

To consider a care design for our veterans, the first step is to understand them and their interests. These groups of individuals are old-fashioned/conservative, relative to recent views and ideas, and this is easily identified in their communication, attitude to rules and commands, values, etc. However, besides military culture, this group has other negative commonalities: post-traumatic stress disorders (PTSD), drug addiction and abuse, mental disorders, brain damage, and other major traumas (Olenick, Flowers, & Diaz, 2015).

This evidence of behavior degradation, or its tendency, was inferred from medical histories and details of individuals belonging to this group (Olenick et al., 2015). However, while the intervention of the United States government in the matter of welfare for US Veterans is the main goal of this research, the conversations and comments...…veteran care, its unique challenges for widespread adoption include things like “integration of veteran care into general health care curriculum, dissemination of training guides across health facilities to ensure its application by caregivers, funding of independent/group research on veteran care and ways to improve its outcomes, etc.”; finally, implementation is not as difficult as maintenance.

As seen in the activities of the Veteran Health Administration (VHA), the overall limitation to deployment can be significantly reduced through a network of organizations/groups that can individually handle each of the identified limitations to the program. This kind of network is the Veteran Health Administration Innovators Network (VHAIN), which facilitates funding, program champions, VHA employees, and other necessary contributions to ensure the successful deployment of programs by the VHA (Veterans Health Administration Organizational Excellence, 2018).

Conclusion

Ensuring that veterans have access to the best form of care is an expectation and obligation on the part of the motherland they have dutifully served. This can be better achieved through research and corresponding targeted care systems that address the mental and other peculiar aspects of veteran care. Trends like the attitudes of this group of individuals (the aged veterans) to life and health, their ideologies, the disposition to caregivers, and social welfare, should be adequately considered in any effective design approach. Overall, a successful veteran care program is one that truly caters to veterans (irrespective of their relative peculiarities).