VA is seeking nominees for Veterans’ Rural Health Advisory Committee. In 2006, Congress established the Veterans Health Administration Office of Rural Health to conduct, coordinate, promote and disseminate research on issues that affect the nearly five million Veterans who reside in rural communities. For more than a decade, the Office of Rural Health has followed a four-part mission: to promote the health and well-being of rural Veterans, generate and diffuse knowledge regarding rural Veteran health, strengthen community health care infrastructure that serves rural Veterans, and inform policy that impacts rural Veteran care delivery.

In 2008, the Secretary of Veterans Affairs chartered the Veterans Rural Health Advisory Committee to study and analyze the challenges rural Veterans face when accessing health care and to advise the Secretary accordingly.

VA is seeking nominees for the Committee from diverse backgrounds and expertise who can provide unique viewpoints and required expertise:

  1. Identify barriers to providing health care services to Veterans in rural communities.
  2. Recommend solutions that facilitate improved access to Veterans’ health care in rural areas.
  3. Provide letters to the Secretary and Congress outlining recommendations to improve and enhance VA’s delivery of services to rural Veterans.
  4. Meet with VA officials, Veterans Service Organizations and other stakeholders to assess the Department’s efforts in providing access to health care, outreach and education services offered to rural Veterans.
  5. Make annual site visits and hold town hall meetings with Veterans to address their concerns.
  6. Provide management and support services for the Committee, provided by the Office of Rural Health.

Given its role in addressing one of our nation’s top priorities, the Committee has an outsized role not just in VA programs and operations, but in our nation’s overall effort to understand and address rural Veterans’ unique health care challenges.

Nominations for membership on the Committee must be received no later than Friday, July 1, 2022, at 5:00 p.m. EST.

For more details, please visit the Notice of Solicitation or www.va.gov/advisory. Any further questions, please contact the VA Advisory Committee Management Office at vaadvisorycmte@va.gov. In the subject line of the email, please add “Solicitation for Rural Health.”

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3 Comments

  1. Fred Ralls June 9, 2022 at 16:32

    I’m interested in serving in the Western Kentucky area.

  2. Ramona Maassen June 9, 2022 at 13:06

    I am interested. I am a person of color, a service connected disabled veteran, with a disabled son, who resides in a rural area in Washington state. I fought for 2 years to establish the right to urgent care at an emergency care facility. I volunteered for over 10 years mentoring creative writing through a veteran’s therapeutic recreational program. Recently, as a result of covid 19 events, I have become aware that veterans have critical issues that are not being addressed, that are not served by the local community nor should be. I can be reached on facebook or by my email on file.

    [Editor: If you are interested, please follow the instructions in the post.]

  3. Kevin Peace June 7, 2022 at 20:56

    I’m interested I live in a rural area of Missouri

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