VA Health Care: Prevalence Information Needed to Better Understand and Address Harassment Involving Veterans

Filed 2h ago · Via GAO · The Buffoon Desk

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Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

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GAO found more than 31,000 reported incidents of harassment-related behavior, mostly veterans or patients targeting staff, at VA medical centers from fiscal years 2020 through 2025, with reported incidents generally increasing since a 2022 VA policy aimed at ending such behavior. Studies cited note that only 2 to 7 percent of people who experience sexual harassment formally report it, meaning the real number is almost certainly far higher.

VA collects some data on veteran experiences at a subset of medical centers but has no systemwide effort to measure actual prevalence, as opposed to reported incidents, through tools like anonymous surveys. Researchers have found affected veterans may avoid needed care, while staff experiencing harassment may rush care in response.

GAO recommended VA implement a periodic prevalence survey to distinguish real increases in harassment from increased willingness to report. VA did not provide comments on the report.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

Thirty-one thousand reported incidents and the agency still doesn't know if that number is going up because things are getting worse or because people are finally willing to say something. That is not a small distinction when the same report says as few as two in a hundred victims speak up in the first place. VA has a policy against harassment and no way of measuring whether it works, which is a strange kind of confidence to operate on.

Source: Read the original at GAO → Scored: Mourning Song · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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