1.     VA awards $100 million in homeless grants. 

2.     Israel, US 'on same page' on Iran, Clinton says. 

3.     Humane Society program to unite pets, military veterans. 

4.     Some vets feeling shorted by the Army College Fund. 

5.     From Battleground to Business. 

6.     VA Grants Will Aid Homeless Veterans. 

7.     Veterans Affairs to hire hundreds of mental health staffers. 

8.     Wash. effort seeks to identify veterans in prison. 

9.     Native American Veterans Falling Through Cracks Between VA, IHS Healthcare Services. 

10.  Bariatric Surgery Doesn't Reduce Long-Term Costs. 

11.  Thompson Introduces Bipartisan Bill To Expand Use Of Telemedicine For Veterans. 

12.  Some Vets Feeling Shorted By The Army College Fund. 

13.  Backlash Builds As For-Profit Schools Rake In GI Bill Funds. 

14.  Don't Call Me "Mister": Report Says VA Needs Cultural Change In Women's Care. 

15.  VA Anxious To Fill In Care Gaps That Face Women Vets. 

16.  Improvements Needed In PTSD Programs For Vets. 

17.  Vietnam Memorial Wins Preliminary Approval To Build Underground Education Center In DC. 

18.  Retired Rear Adm. Froman, Still At Your Service. 

19.  The 2012 Texas Nursing Excellence Awards Finalists Are Revealed. 

20.  Aug. 1 Deadline For Clothing Allowance. 

21.  Veterans' Health: Beyond PTSD And Traumatic Brain Injury. 

22.  Care For Veterans Impresses Visitor. 

23.  St. Lucie County Veteran Services Counselor Resigns Amid Accusation Of Stealing From Account. 

24.  Civil War Soldier Is Lost In History. 

25.  Updated PTSD Program Means Better Care For Vets. 

26.  Young Vets Urged To Get Help For PTSD. 

27.  Stevie Nicks Honors Hyannis War Veteran. 

28.  Wounded Warrior Project, NASCAR Driver Team Up To Surprise Paralyzed Veteran. 

29.  VA / VSO-MSO Hearings as July 18, 2012:

30.  Today in History:

 1.    VA awards $100 million in homeless grants.  The funds are part of the department’s larger effort to end veterans homelessness by 2015.

 2.    Israel, US 'on same page' on Iran, Clinton says.  Wrapping up a whirlwind international trip to Europe, Asia and the Middle East, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday that the U.S. and Israel are “on the same page at this moment” over how to deal with Iran and vowed to use “all elements of American power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.”

 3.    Humane Society program to unite pets, military veterans.  The Western Pennsylvania Humane Society is giving away pets to military veterans, officials announced on Monday.

 4.    Some vets feeling shorted by the Army College Fund.  At the time, the deal seemed irresistible to Eric Hickam: Give six years to the Army, a recruiter told him in 2003, and you can get a $50,000 "kicker" undefined the Army College Fund. When his payments started coming last fall, his first year at Columbia University in New York City, the amount fell far short of what Hickam had anticipated.

 5.    From Battleground to Business.  Jackson Free Press  The U.S. Small Business Administration and the U.S. Departments of Veterans Affairs and Defense have teamed up to launch a training program for transitioning veterans from service to entrepreneurship. The U.S. Marine Corps will pilot the nation-wide ...

 6.    VA Grants Will Aid Homeless Veterans.  Department of Defense  The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is awarding nearly $100 million in grants that will help approximately 42000 homeless and at-risk veterans and their families, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki announced.

 7.    Veterans Affairs to hire hundreds of mental health staffers.  Ventura County Star  The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has launched a nationwide recruiting campaign to hire hundreds of additional mental health clinicians for its facilities. Plans call for adding 1600 mental health clinicians, along with 300 support staff ...

 8.    Wash. effort seeks to identify veterans in prison.  The Seattle Times  She stressed that when both they, and the state, know their veteran status, the state can better help them get the benefits they've earned once they're released, easing their re-entry into the community and hopefully cutting back on recidivism. "I don ...

9.    Native American Veterans Falling Through Cracks Between VA, IHS Healthcare Services. US Medicine  "The VA and IHS need to better coordinate services for American Indian and Alaska Native veterans, federal officials acknowledged at a recent Senate Indian Affairs Committee hearing." Stephanie Elaine Birdwell, director of VA's Office of Tribal Government Relations, "told the committee during her testimony that VA is embarking on a robust outreach and consultation effort with tribes. She said her office was established by the VA last year to develop partnerships with American Indians and Alaska Natives to 'enhance access to services and benefits' for native veterans."

10.Bariatric Surgery Doesn't Reduce Long-Term Costs. Reuters A new study of obese, middle-aged, male veterans found that bariatric weight-loss surgery may not save money. Matthew Maciejewski, the study's lead author from the Center for Health Services Research in Primary Care at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Durham, North Carolina, discussed his findings, stating, "There are some real health benefits that were realized in these patients, they just don't translate into cost savings in a three-year time."  MedPage Today  "Among obese veterans, bariatric surgery -- predominantly gastric bypass -- was not associated with lower healthcare expenditures in the three years after the operation," according to a study published in the July issue of the Archives of Surgery. An invited critique "noted some unanswered questions from the current study, including whether pharmacy costs were reduced with surgery, whether quality of life differed between the two groups, and whether the findings can be extrapolated to current practice, which includes greater use of laparoscopic gastric bands and sleeves."

11.Thompson Introduces Bipartisan Bill To Expand Use Of Telemedicine For Veterans. Gant (PA) Daily "US Reps. Glenn 'GT' Thompson (R-PA) and Charles B. Rangel (D-NY) have introduced H.R. 6107, the Veterans E-Health & Telemedicine Support (VETS) Act of 2012, a bill aimed at increasing veteran health care access at no additional cost to the taxpayer." The legislation "expands the current Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) state licensure exemption to allow credentialed health care professionals to work across state borders performing telemedicine without having to obtain a new state license." The Daily added, "H.R. 6107 was introduced with the support of twelve additional bipartisan members of Congress and numerous veteran support groups, including the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW), the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, and American Telemedicine Association."

12.Some Vets Feeling Shorted By The Army College Fund. USA Today  26-year-old Eric Hickam, who served in Iraq, is "one in a new wave of veterans who are discovering that their" $50,000 "Army College Fund is worth far less than they thought when they enlisted. The Army has acknowledged, in at least 91 cases, that enlistment agreements involving the fund were 'blatantly misleading' for more than a decade, a review of publicly available military records show. Even so, it denied appeals from veterans who felt misled" into thinking that the fund money would be added to their GI Bill benefits.

13.Backlash Builds As For-Profit Schools Rake In GI Bill Funds. Los Angeles Times "Congress, the White House and veterans groups... are cracking down on for-profit schools that have raked in hundreds of millions of dollars in GI Bill benefits. T hey say the schools prey on veterans with misleading ads while selling expensive and woefully inadequate educations." Congress, along with the "White House and veterans groups," is "cracking down on for-profit schools that have raked in hundreds of millions of dollars in GI Bill benefits. They say the schools prey on veterans with misleading ads while selling expensive and woefully inadequate educations." The schools disagree, but in "April, President Obama issued an executive order requiring the Department of Veterans Affairs to trademark the term 'GI Bill' to help prevent uses that deceive veterans."

14.Don't Call Me "Mister": Report Says VA Needs Cultural Change In Women's Care.  US Medicine "Female veterans experience more physical and mental health issues than male veterans, yet are 30% less likely" to sign up for Veterans Affairs services than are men. US Medicine adds, "Part of the problem, according to a recently released report, is that the needs of women veterans differ substantially from those of their male counterparts and, historically, the VA has not offered gender-responsive services to meet those needs. The recently released Department of Veterans Affairs draft report...notes that improving care for women veterans has become a high priority for the VA as a consequence of the sharp rise in the number of women eligible for and accessing services over the last 10 years." The report, however, urges VA to increase "capacity to provide consistent and coordinated access to comprehensive services and benefits that meet the unique needs of women veterans."

 15.VA Anxious To Fill In Care Gaps That Face Women Vets.  US Medicine VA has spent "more money on women's healthcare research in the last few years than in the previous three decades combined." However, the "agency still has substantial knowledge gaps it is anxious to fill in." US Medicine adds, "Improvement in VA's care for women will be strongly linked to their improvement in mental-healthcare services, because 31% of female veterans have a diagnosed mental-healthcare condition, compared with 20% of male veterans."

16.Improvements Needed In PTSD Programs For Vets. FederalDaily  "The first comprehensive report on veterans' and service members' access to post-traumatic stress disorder care was released last week, and it finds that improvements are needed in programs that prevent, identify and treat the condition. The Institute of Medicine report, 'Treatment for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Military and Veteran Populations: Initial Assessment,' is the first of two mandated by Congress in 2010 to examine the efficacy of PTSD programs under the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs." FederalDaily adds, "'DOD and VA offer many programs for PTSD, but treatment isn't reaching everyone who needs it, and the departments aren't tracking which treatments are being used or evaluating how well they work in the long term,' Sandro Galea, a professor of epidemiology at Columbia University and the chair of the committee that authored the report, said in a press statement." Galea also said the "DOD has no information on the effectiveness of its programs to prevent PTSD."

 17.Vietnam Memorial Wins Preliminary Approval To Build Underground Education Center In DC.  AP  "An education center planned for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial" in Washington, DC, "has received preliminary approval for construction of an underground facility on the National Mall." Recently, the National Capital Planning Commission "granted preliminary approval for the two-level structure that will be on the northern grounds of the Lincoln Memorial." Jan Scruggs, "president of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, says the group plans to break ground for the facility in November."

 18.Retired Rear Adm. Froman, Still At Your Service. U-T San Diego Retired Rear Admiral Ronne Froman, who "joined forces with former Navy Master Chief Maurice Wilson to kick off his concept of cognitive behavioral training. More than 500 vets have completed the free, three-week course," known as "Reboot." The course, which seeks to retrain vets for civilian jobs, has caught the attention of the Pentagon and Deputy Secretary of Veterans Affairs Curtis Cox. Cox "will speak at the July 27 graduation."

 19.The 2012 Texas Nursing Excellence Awards Finalists Are Revealed.  Nurse  Omana Simon and Huberta T. Cozart have been "nominated for our 2012 Nursing Excellence program." Simon is the Facility Telehealth Coordinator at the Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Affairs Medical Center. Cozart is a Bedside Nurse Educator at the same facility.

 20.Aug. 1 Deadline For Clothing Allowance. Clarksville (TN) Leaf Chronicle "The Aug. 1 deadline to file an application for an annual clothing allowance from the Department of Veterans Affairs is fast approaching. Veterans who wear or use a qualifying prescribed prosthetic or orthopedic appliance and/or prescription medication for a service-connected disability may be eligible for an annual clothing allowance." The "clothing allowance is paid once a year."

 21.Veterans' Health: Beyond PTSD And Traumatic Brain Injury. Huffington Post

22.Care For Veterans Impresses Visitor. Erie Times-News "On Friday June 29, I had the opportunity to drive a young man" to the Veterans Affairs hospital in "Erie for an appointment. This was my first visit and I was pleased with what I saw" at the "busy, bright, clean and cheerful" facility.

 24.Civil War Soldier Is Lost In History. Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

 25.Updated PTSD Program Means Better Care For Vets. McClatchy

 26.Young Vets Urged To Get Help For PTSD. Augusta (GA) Chronicle

 27.Stevie Nicks Honors Hyannis War Veteran. Cape Cod (MA) Times

 28.Wounded Warrior Project, NASCAR Driver Team Up To Surprise Paralyzed Veteran.  Statesville (NC) Record & Landmark

 29.VA / VSO-MSO Hearings as July 18, 2012:

             July 18, 2012.  Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee will hold a hearing on the nomination of Thomas Sowers II to be Assistant Secretary, Office of Public and Intergovernmental Affairs.  10:00 A.M.; 418 Russell

       July 18, 2012.  Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Subcommittee on National Security, Homeland Defense, and Foreign Operations, will hold a hearing on the backlog of pending disability claims.  10:00 A.M., 2247 Rayburn House Office Building

       July 18, 2012. HVAC, Disability and Memorial Affairs Subcommittee, will hold a hearing entitled: “Invisible Wounds: Examining the Disability Compensation Benefits Process for Victims of Military Sexual Trauma.”  2:00 P.M; 334 Cannon House Office Building

       July 25, 2012.  The House Committee on Veterans Affairs and the House Armed Services Committee will hold a joint hearing titled “Back from the Battlefield: DOD and VA Collaboration to Assist Service Members Returning to Civilian Life.”  10:00 AM; 2118 Rayburn HOB

       August 2, 2012 (Tentative).  HVAC, Subcommittee on Economic Opportunity and Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations may hold a joint hearing to discuss the SDVOSB/VOSB certification process.