Blumenthal & Brown Press VA to Improve Data Collection for LGBT Veterans & Measure Progress on Racial & Ethnic Disparities

[WASHINGTON, DC] – On Veterans Day, U.S. Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH), members of the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, called on the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to improve its data collection of veterans’ race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and gender data to effectively address health disparities. The senators’ letter to Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert Wilkie comes in light of two recent U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports, which highlighted glaring issues with the VA’s failure to accurately collect and analyze information about LGBT veterans, and outlined the agency’s shortcomings in measuring and ensuring progress on health care disparities linked to race and ethnicity.

“Recent reports by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) highlighted major issues in the accuracy and completeness of data collected by VA on race and ethnicity, and sexual orientation and gender identity. Such gaps severely limit opportunities to analyze disparities in health care outcomes – a tremendous problem at any time, but particularly in light of the ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic,” wrote the senators. “It is critical that VA ensure that the race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and gender data captured in veterans’ health records is complete and accurate. VA forms must be standardized across the system and VA employees must be trained to correctly gather this data.”

The senators pointed out that the VA has failed to adequately collect information about sexual orientation and gender data despite updated guidance from 2018, and that this failure prevents it from being able to “identify and address health disparities in LGBT veteran populations.”

Blumenthal and Brown pressed the VA for answers about the agency’s collection, analysis, and application of racial, ethnic, sexual orientation, and gender data, and how the data is being used by the VA to inform its health care policies.

A copy of the full letter is available here.

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