Here’s what came from historic women veterans legislation 

While the VA has had some version of an Office of Women’s Health since 1988, this provision puts it into law. It mandates adequate staffing, outlines responsibilities and calls for annual reporting from the Office of Women’s Health.

Review the latest Office of Women’s Health Annual Report, released in May 2025 and covering fiscal year 2023.

The VA was tasked with prioritizing retrofitting medical facilities to support the health care of women veterans and address deficiencies in environment of care—often relating to privacy and perceived safety. The provision also authorized $20 million to be appropriated to support those efforts.

The VA submitted a required plan at the end of 2021, listing 77 projects totaling nearly $610 million as part of a five-year capital investment plan to expand care for women veterans. Projects included constructing a women’s health clinic in New Hampshire; renovating a psychological residential rehabilitation home for women in Georgia; creating a women’s imaging center in West Palm Beach, Florida; and upgrading women’s privacy in Des Moines, Iowa.

It was not immediately clear how many of these projects have been funded or completed.

This provision required that the VA establish a policy of environment of care standards that align with the previously determined minimum requirements that ensure all eligible and enrolled women veterans have access to medically necessary services.

Environment of care standards are meant to ensure that the physical environment is designed and operated in a way that maintains veterans’ dignity, privacy, safety and security. Examples include access to women-only bathrooms, secured sleeping accommodations, and privacy curtains or screens in exam rooms. These considerations can be particularly important for veterans who have experienced sexual trauma.

In June 2021, the VA submitted a mandated report confirming that it had updated its environment of care standards to align with required women’s health care.

“This enhancement regarding the oversight of care for women veterans puts VA on course to properly address and sustain the privacy and dignity issues for women veterans,” the report states.

This provision requires the VA to provide readjustment and reintegration services in group retreat settings, including women-only retreats. Minutes from a December 2023 meeting of the Advisory Committee on Women Veterans show that between March 2022 and December 2023, just 173 women veterans participated in 11 women-only retreats.

Minutes from subsequent committee meetings and other publicly available sources don’t provide updated numbers or an evaluation of the program. For veterans interested in retreats through the VA, little information is available online.

DAV has previously recommended that the VA evaluate the effectiveness of retreat programming and whether current offerings meet demand.

The VA was required to partner with public or private legal service providers to offer services for women veterans, with a focus on addressing child support, eviction and foreclosure prevention, discharge upgrades, financial guardianship, credit counseling, and family reconciliation assistance.

According to a VA news release, in 2024 the VA awarded $26.8 million in legal services to 108 public and nonprofit entities and said the grant program “ensures at least 10% of funding supports the provision of legal services for women veterans.”

The Deborah Sampson Act required a report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) looking at services provided to very-low-income women veterans. GAO published its report in September 2022. Takeaways include:

• In fiscal years 2017 through 2021, the VA’s Supportive Services for Veteran Families (SSVF) program served about 11,100 women veterans annually, making up about 13% of all veterans served.
• Around 40% of women veterans participating in the program had children, with about 75% of these veterans being single parents. In comparison, 14% of men served had children, with about 30% of these veterans being single parents.
• About 57% of women veterans in the program were enrolled for rapid rehousing, and around 56% received temporary financial assistance to help with housing costs.
• Several providers continually ranked lower than their peers when veterans were asked about quality of services and courteousness of staff.
• Four of the six women veterans in GAO’s discussion groups who had received SSVF services described feeling demoralized or shamed by VA or provider staff.

In an effort to improve provider quality, program leaders said they implemented a process in fiscal year 2022 that requires service providers to address veteran feedback from surveys.

“Evaluating these new efforts would help [Supportive Services for Veteran Families] determine whether additional actions are needed to improve provider quality,” the GAO report says. “Reporting to Congress and the public on the results would be consistent with VA’s commitment to accountability and transparency.”

As noted in DAV’s report Women Veterans: The Journey Ahead, a lack of child care is often a barrier to receiving health care, and women are more likely to have sole or primary child care duties.

The Deborah Sampson Act mandated a pilot program using certified child care services in the community for veterans receiving readjustment counseling and related mental health services. The provision ultimately required that all VA facilities offer some form of child care services by January 2026, which could include stipends. The VA didn’t respond to a request for an update on the availability of child care services by the publication time.

The VA was required to report to Congress on the availability of prostheses made for women veterans. According to DAV’s previous reporting on women veterans, while progress had been made, the VA still struggled to source prostheses that properly fit women.

Prosthetic devices include implants, mobility aids, prosthetic limbs, sensory aids like eyeglasses and adaptive household items. According to the report required by this provision, nearly 300,000 women veterans received prosthetic devices in fiscal year 2021.

For that same year, 1,281 women veterans enrolled in the VA were identified as having a major amputation that would call for a prosthetic limb. While the report includes a satisfaction survey for amputation-related prostheses, the survey didn’t cover non-limb prostheses.

The report does list examples of how the VA is leveraging technology to better accommodate gender-specific prostheses needs, including 3D-printed breast prostheses for post-mastectomy cancer patients.

This provision called on the VA to enhance the capabilities of the Women Veterans Call Center, but it didn’t define the scope of “enhance” and didn’t require any reporting on the performance of the call center. The call center is meant to respond to women veterans’ requests for assistance with accessing health care and benefits.

According to minutes from a December 2023 meeting of the Advisory Committee on Women Veterans, the VA said it was developing new customer relations management software “that will greatly enhance call center representative response times, integrate with the telephone software, enhance email capabilities, automate reporting, and integrate with up-to-date veteran contact information.” A contract for those upgrades was awarded in fiscal year 2023, with expected completion in the first quarter of fiscal year 2025.

According to its 2024 report, the Advisory Committee on Women Veterans recommended the VA improve how it promotes the call center to best reach women veterans. The VA responded to the recommendation by writing that “extensive advertising and promotion are already occurring.”

In a December 2021 Deborah Sampson Act-mandated study on infertility services, the VA noted that it had never conducted a comprehensive study on the prevalence of infertility diagnoses and needs nor the VA’s capacity to address those needs.

The report found that between fiscal years 2019 and 2020, 5,563 women using VA health care were diagnosed with infertility. For the same years, 7,192 men were diagnosed with infertility.

Examples of infertility services available to women veterans include infertility assessments and counseling, laboratory testing, imaging services such as ultrasounds and X-rays, hormonal therapies, surgical correction of infertility, fertility medications,  artificial and intrauterine insemination, and tubal ligation reversal.

While all veterans enrolled in VA care are eligible for infertility evaluation and many treatment options, in vitro fertilization (IVF) is limited to veterans with service-connected conditions that result in an inability to procreate without the use of fertility treatment and to their lawful spouses.

At the time of the study, the IVF benefit didn’t allow for donated eggs and sperm and was limited to legally married, opposite-sex couples. That has since changed—donated eggs and sperm are allowed, and single or same-sex couples can be eligible for IVF.

This provision puts in writing the belief that current members of the armed forces reserve components, including the National Guard, should be able to access counseling and treatment resources related to military sexual trauma (MST) and for that access to not be limited to Vet Centers.

According to the VA website, those members can receive MST-related care at VA medical facilities with a Department of Defense referral and TRICARE authorization. No referral or authorization is needed to receive care at Vet Centers.

Get more information on eligibility for MST-related care.

The VA is now required to staff at least one full- or part-time women’s health primary care provider at every medical facility. To the extent possible, the provider’s duties should include training other providers on the needs of women veterans.

According to data provided by the VA, as of September 2024, all VA medical centers have a women’s health primary care provider. In January 2026, the VA announced an expansion in women’s health expertise in rural areas, reporting that 90% of rural VA clinics had at least one women’s health primary care provider.

An additional $1 million was appropriated per year for fiscal years 2021–2025 for the VA’s women veterans health care mini-residency program for primary and emergency care providers. According to a 2025 VA training handbook, more than 12,000 providers had completed the residency and achieved the designation of women’s health primary care provider.

The VA was also required to offer a women veterans training module for community care providers and report back annually on its utilization. Around 2.8 million veterans use the VA’s network of more than 1 million community care providers, and women are often referred to community care for gender-specific needs, including maternity care.

While the report is required annually, the most recent publicly available report is from March 2023. The VA didn’t respond to a request for a more recent report by publication time. But according to the March 2023 report, only 464 community providers completed the women veterans training module between April 2021 and March 2023.

The VA’s larger Women’s Health Program also includes Women Veteran Program Managers (WVPMs), whose role is to advocate for women veterans’ health care needs, provide leadership and oversee the delivery of women’s health care, among other duties. One WVPM is appointed to each Veterans Integrated Service Network (VISN), or region, and they must serve in the capacity part time at a 50% full-time equivalent.

According to data provided by the VA, as of September 2024, 137 out of 139 health care systems had a WVPM. But a one-time report released in 2021 and mandated by the Deborah Sampson Act indicated that regional and facility-level program managers needed more time and fewer collateral duties to effectively do their jobs.

The report also found that “it is important that VHA policy supports additional time for the Lead WVPM position; improve policy compliance that full-time WVPMs are not assigned collateral positions; and that the role of mentors and opportunities for shadowing are integral for new WVPMs learning the position and their confidence in successfully fulfilling position requirements.”

The VA’s Women Veterans Coordinator Program was created after a 1984 report identified a need for better outreach and increased gender-specific care.

A one-time mandated report evaluating the program, published in July 2021, showed that all regional benefits offices had a primary Women Veterans Coordinator and most had an alternate to serve as backup. The report also showed that 53% of Women Veterans Coordinators who responded to a survey stated that, in the previous 12 months, they spent seven hours or less on Women Veterans Coordinator duties.

DAV’s most recent women veterans report highlighted the role peer specialists can play in a veterans’ mental health recovery. In the VA, peer specialists are veterans who have recovered or are recovering from a mental health condition and who have completed required training. For women veterans, who are more likely to experience isolation and poor social supports after military service, peer specialists can be particularly effective.

The Deborah Sampson Act called for an assessment of the use and availability of female peer specialists across the VA. At the time of the VA report, 27 out of 140 health care systems across 14 regions didn’t employ any female peer specialists.

The VA followed up the assessment report with a staffing improvement plan that recommended that each VA health care system employ two full-time, female peer specialists. The plan also recommends employing additional female peer specialists in the 47 health care systems where women veterans used mental health services at the highest rates. According to the VA, as of February 2026, 62 out of 170 medical centers employ at least two women peer specialists.

This provision expanded the VA’s MST treatment authority to include service members who experience sexual trauma while on National Guard state active duty. It also allows service members with other-than-honorable discharges to access MST-related medical care.

This provision requires that the Center for Women Veterans’ Advisory Committee on Women Veterans provide in its annual reporting an assessment of the effects of intimate partner violence on women. The most recently available report, from 2024, notes that there are not any recommendations addressing intimate partner violence for that reporting year.

“We will continue to consider the need for recommendations, as the committee receives updates on VA’s efforts to address [Intimate Partner Violence] and research on [Intimate Partner Violence] in women veterans,” the report states.

Find the committee’s annual reports here.

The VA has long worked to end sexual assault and harassment in VA facilities. To monitor prevention efforts, the Deborah Sampson Act mandated an annual report of such incidents.

The most recent report available, covering Oct. 1, 2023, to Sept. 30, 2024, includes data from four reporting sources that use different terms and formats, making overall tracking and year-to-year comparisons difficult. Combining comparable data from the various sources shows:

• At least 1,074 reported incidents of sexual assault, including open cases and those that were deemed unfounded
• 7,440 incidents of sexual harassment, including open cases and those that were deemed unfounded
• At the time of the report, 440 open cases of reported sexual harassment and four open reports of sexual assault

Women veterans are at high risk of intimate partner violence, with 1 in 5 women who use VA primary care reporting that they had experienced such violence in the past year. Previous reporting also shows a strong association between this type of violence and suicidal ideation and self-harm.

The Deborah Sampson Act mandated a two-year intimate partner violence pilot program. Given the rates of violence among veterans, the pilot program concluded that “it is not feasible for VA to provide care for all enrolled veterans screening positive for [intimate partner violence] without increased staffing.”

But according to the VA, as of December 2025, staffing dedicated to intimate partner violence services and support hadn’t increased since the pilot program concluded.

Findings from the mandated national baseline review, released in March 2023, of intimate partner violence included:

• Gaps in available data, including rates among veterans from minority groups like Native American veterans
• Rates of violence in the past year ranging from about 27% to 45% among veterans
• Rates of veterans perpetrating intimate partner violence ranging from 43.5% to 48% in the past year

A task force also mandated by this provision initially met in December 2024. A July 2025 task force report said a comprehensive national program to address intimate partner violence among veterans was underway. The VA currently offers services and training under its Intimate Partner Violence Assistance Program and has designated local coordinators.

This provision requires that the VA collect and analyze data on all of its programs for veterans and that the data be disaggregated by gender, race and ethnicity. This policy is stated in a March 2025 update to the VA Handbook.

The law called for a study looking into barriers women veterans face when accessing health care. That study, released in September 2024, surveyed over 7,300 women veterans and examined 10 different barriers, including driving distance to care, child care, gender sensitivity and safety. Findings included:

• Less than 20% surveyed indicated that finding transportation is either very hard or somewhat hard.
• About 1 in 4 women veterans have switched to a non-VA provider because of limited hours of operation at the VA.
• Child care was a barrier for 17% of surveyed women veterans ages 18 through 34.
• The most cited case for needing child care was for mental health visits (63%) in comparison with other medical appointments.
• Around 72% of those surveyed who use VA care said the VA is sensitive to women veteran’s health care needs.
• Those who feel hesitant to receive mental health care increased from 24% in 2014 to 42%, with a primary concern being the medications prescribed.

The most frequent barrier to VA care was identified by those surveyed as not understanding their benefits (37%), especially for non-VA users (49%).

The report concluded that the VA has made significant strides in addressing barriers since its 2014 assessment.

“However, as VA continues to respond to the increasing demand, ongoing examination of the gaps and challenges that influence women veterans’ decisions to seek care through VA remains paramount,” the report states.

The Deborah Sampson Act called on the VA to study the feasibility of offering its parenting program at all VA medical centers as part of care for veterans and families affected by MST. Parenting Skills Training in Affective and Interpersonal Regulation (STAIR) is a 12-session program that teaches skilled for managing strong emotions and building healthy relationships.

This provision of the law called for an initial report and a final follow-up report related to expanding STAIR. The final report concluded that it was “not feasible or advisable to expand the training and implementation of Parenting STAIR to all VAMCs offering MST-related care,” citing low utilization. The report also noted that the effectiveness of the program hadn’t been studied and is unknown.

As noted in DAV’s latest women veterans report, 1 in 3 women enrolled in the VA report experiencing MST, and there are strong associations between such trauma and suicidal ideation and behavior. An annual report required by the Deborah Sampson Act shows that in fiscal year 2023 alone, 38,893 MST-related issues were claimed, over 70% of which were from women.

The provision also called for specialized teams to process MST claims, a recommendation made following a 2018 VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) review that found nearly half of denied MST-related benefits claims weren’t properly processed. According to the VA, as of December 2025, the VA’s MST Operations Center employed over 1,300 specially trained representatives.

The VA is now required to allow veterans filing for claims related to sexual assault or sexual harassment to choose the sex of the provider conducting the VA disability exam.

The VA was further required to report on its progress of implementing recommendations from the 2018 OIG report, “Denied Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Claims Related to Military Sexual Trauma.” In the VA’s 2020 report responding to OIG’s findings, the VA said it had improved the way it processes MST-related claims through training programs, updated policies and specially trained coordinators across the country.

But a July 2025 VA OIG report found the center’s turnover rate was over 22% and that MST claims accuracy dropped 10 percentage points between 2019 and 2024. The VA concurred with OIG’s three recommendations, but two remain open and not yet implemented, according to the OIG report page. Those recommendations are:

• Develop and implement a method to identify and report separate quality statistics for the Military Sexual Trauma Operations Center.
• Develop and implement a process to assess designated reviewers’ competency in processing denied military sexual trauma claims and monitor effectiveness.