Ms. Laurine Carson, Deputy Executive Director for Policy, Procedures and Interagency Collaborations in Compensation Service, at the Veterans Benefits Administration, Washington D.C
WASHINGTON, DC — To ensure that quality VA care is being provided to all veterans regardless of age, race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual identity, an agency equity team is being established. The team, known as the IDEA (inclusion, diversity, equity and access) Council, will be responsible for helping VA improve care to historically underserved veterans and to eliminate existing healthcare and benefits disparities.
Its launch comes after a year that saw the unearthing of longstanding racial disparities in veteran benefits distribution, including one ongoing lawsuit that accuses the department of granting benefits to white veterans at a higher rate than Black veterans.
The new team comes as part of President Joe Biden’s executive order in February to address disparities across the federal government and is an evolution of VA’s existing IDEA Sub-Council, established in 2021. According to VA, this new council, which is comprised of senior leaders from across the department, will be more action-oriented and empowered to make decisions across VA.
“At VA, it’s our mission to serve all Veterans, their families, caregivers, and survivors as well as they’ve served our country,” said VA Secretary Denis McDonough in a statement. “This new Agency Equity Team will help us deliver on that promise, making sure that we provide every veteran with the world-class care and benefits they deserve. … The team’s first order of business will be identifying any disparities in VA healthcare and benefits and eliminating them.”
VA also is standing up a new Equity Assurance Office within the VBA, which will work with the IDEA Council to eliminate disparities in delivering disability benefits. That office will be led by Laurine Carson, who was deputy executive director of compensation service at VBA, and will report directly to the Office of the Under Secretary for Benefits.
A lawsuit filed last November highlighted the racial disparities in VA benefits. Conley Monk Jr., a Black veteran who served in Vietnam, spent 50 years trying to get VA to accept his claims for disability, housing and education benefits. He was eventually successful, but in the process of backing up his claim, his legal team discovered statistics showing that Monk was hardly an anomaly.
The Veterans Legal Services Clinic at Yale Law School obtained documents that demonstrated VA has denied Black veterans’ claims at a statistically higher rate (29.5%) than white veterans (24.2%) for years and that the disability compensation for Black veterans was 30.3%, compared to 37.1% for white veterans.
The following month, the Institute for Economic and Racial Equity (IERE) at Brandeis University released a report showing that the barriers in place that kept Black World War II veterans from fully utilizing the benefits of the GI Bill directly contributed to a racial wealth disparity that exists today.
In February, NBC News released a series of reports looking at the impact disparities have had on Black veterans, bringing Monk’s lawsuit and the Brandeis research into the national spotlight.
Those reports also unearthed internal VA documents showing that, from 2011 to 2016, Black veterans were more often denied benefits for claims related to PTSD (57%) compared to white veterans (43%). This was particularly concerning to advocates, who pointed out that VA research has found that Black veterans suffer from PTSD at a higher rate due to their higher likelihood to see combat.
VA recently released data from 2017 to 2023 showing that the disparity has shrunk from 14% to closer to 5% but that the gap remains.
Asked at a press conference what these new groups will do that previous VA diversity, equity and inclusion services did not, McDonough said, “The standing up of the Equity Assurance Office in VBA is new, and it is unique, especially an assurance office run by a VA leader with the kind of experience and expertise we have with [Laurine Carson]. … It’s all new and demanded, I think, by both the president as well as our ongoing concerns… We’ll stay on top of it until we can ensure every veteran that they get the benefits and care that they have earned.”