1 US DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON FORMER ...

552 Pages·2015·0.86 MB·English

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U.S. DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS

ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON FORMER PRISONERS OF WAR

BIANNUAL MEETING

VOLUME I

Monday, April 27, 2015

9:52 a.m.

Hamilton Crowne Plaza Hotel
1001 14th St., N.W.
Washington, D.C.

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P A R T I C I P A N T S

MEMBERS PRESENT:

Dr. Thomas M. McNish, M.D., M.P.H., Chairman

Dr. Michael R. Ambrose, M.D.
Mr. Norman Bussel
Rev. Dr. Robert G. Certain
Dr. Rhonda Cornum, M.D.
Mr. Robert W. Fletcher
Mr. Paul E. Galanti
Mr. Thomas Hanton
Dr. Hal Kushner, M.D., F.A.C.S.

MEMBERS NOT PRESENT:

Dr. William F. Andrews, Ph.D.
Mr. Clarence Earl Derrington, Jr.
Ms. Shoshana N. Johnson
Dr. Charles A. Stenger, Ph.D.

ALSO PRESENT:

Mr. Eric Robinson, VBA, DFO, FPOW Advisory
Committee
Dr. Robert L. Kroft, Ed.D., Employee Education
System, VHA
Mrs. Melanie Bussel
Mrs. Carol E. Fletcher
Ms. Anna Crenshaw, Benefits Assistance Service
Ms. Purnima Boominathan, OGC
Dr. Madhulika Agarwal, M.D., Deputy Under
Secretary for Health for Policy and Services,
VHA
Dr. Marion Sherman, M.D., Chief, Mental Health
VA Loma Linda Health Care System
Mr. Danny Pummill, Principal Deputy Under
Secretary for Benefits
Mr. Tom Murphy, VBA
Mr. Kevin Friel, VBA
Ms. Leslie Williams. VBA
Ms. Jocelyn Moses, VBA
Dr. Stacy Pollack, M.D.
Ms. Danielle DeCarlo, OPP
Mr. Michael Gibbs, OPP
Ms. Allison Zmetra, VBA, Compensation Service

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Ms. Alice A. Booher
Ms. Patricia Benker, National Service Officer
Ms. Victoria McLaughlin, McLaughlin Reporting

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C O N T E N T S

PAGE

Welcome, Member Recognition,
and General Business
Dr. Tom McNish, M.D., Chairman 5

Remarks and Member Recognition, and
Administrative Business
Mr. Eric Robinson
Designated Federal Officer
Advisory Committees on FPOWs 36

VBA FPOW Outreach Oversight Briefing
Ms. Anna Crenshaw
Assistant Director
Policy, Procedures and Outreach
Benefits Assistance Service (BAS) 40

Annual Federal Advisory Committee
Ethics Training
Ms. Purnima Boominathan
Staff Attorney & Deputy Ethics Official
Office of General Counsel 72

Briefing and Discussion 120
Mr. Danny Pummill
Principal Deputy Under Secretary
for Benefits
VBA 121

Briefing and Discussion
Dr. Madhulika Agarwal, M.D.
Deputy Under Secretary for Health
for Policy and Services
VHA 179

FPOW Automatic Grant of Awards
Dr. Marion Sherman, M.D.
Chief, Mental Health
VA Loma Linda Health Care System 217

Recess 287

- - -

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P R O C E E D I N G S
CHAIRMAN McNISH: Welcome to our spring
meeting, and we've got, as Rhonda said, we've got a
quorum. We're missing some folks. Earl
Derrington. I talked to him, and for health
reasons, they're not going to be able to make it.
Bill Andrews, as far as I know, no one has been
able to get in contact with Bill to find out what's
going on. We all know that the one meeting he did
come to was where he had just been diagnosed with a
brain tumor so we don't know the answer to that.
Charlie Stenger is still officially on the
Committee until whatever changes occur, probably in
the near future. I talked to Charlie's wife and
he's hoping to be able to come for at least a brief
time since we're meeting here in D.C.
So thanks to all of you.
DR. CORNUM: How about Shoshana?
CHAIRMAN McNISH: Pardon?
REV. DR. CERTAIN: Shoshana.
MRS. BUSSEL: Shoshana.
DR. CORNUM: Anybody hear from Shoshana?

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CHAIRMAN McNISH: Oh, right.
DR. KUSHNER: No one has heard from her;
right?
CHAIRMAN McNISH: No, nobody has heard
from Shoshana as far as I know.
MR. ROBINSON: I have not heard from her.
CHAIRMAN McNISH: Eric said he hadn't
heard anything about her.
DR. CORNUM: Okay. Thank you.
CHAIRMAN McNISH: Thanks for filling that
square. Victoria, thanks for showing up again to--
MS. McLAUGHLIN: Thank you.
CHAIRMAN McNISH: --subject yourself to
this crowd. You're getting to be a member. Hey,
we need to put you down as a member of the
Committee.
[Laughter.]
REV. DR. CERTAIN: Then she wouldn't be
able to take transcription.
CHAIRMAN McNISH: Welcome to the folks in
the peanut gallery. Yeah, that's probably a good
name for it.

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Bob Kroft. We'll hear from him later.
Marion Sherman, we'll also hear from her later, and
she has an interesting topic to bring to us as the
idea of granting, automatically granting 100
percent to all former prisoners of war, which
hopefully will bring some interesting discussion
and some material for our report. So we'll see
how--we'll run it up the flag and see if somebody
salutes. Be nice.
Joyce Moses, who's here--Jocelyn Moses.
Sorry. Thank you. I didn't screw it up.
[Laughter.]
CHAIRMAN McNISH: Jocelyn Moses, who is
here to make sure that Eric stays in line and I
guess subsequently to make sure that I pronounce
her name right, too. And she's Eric's boss, as I
understand it.
MR. FLETCHER: Tell her to leave, Eric.
[Laughter.]
CHAIRMAN McNISH: Alice--tell her to get
out of here. You can do it; right? We understand
Boomer is coming later so then Jocelyn will have

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somebody flying top cover for her, too.
And Alice Booher, who we all know, has
joined us. So that's no surprise. And the ladies
who have joined us. Unfortunately, my lady was
planning to be here, and after a four-day trip to
Colorado, which ended Saturday afternoon, she
decided she wasn't quite ready to make another
plane ride Sunday morning with me. So she didn't
make it. But welcome to Melanie, to Carol.
And then our--one of the most loyal people
that we have from the field who routinely shows up
at our meetings and is much appreciated, Pat
Benker. Thank you. All the way from Texas.
All right. Got some disappointments
obviously associated with this meeting in that we
had hoped that either the Secretary or the Deputy
or perhaps the Chief of Staff, but I understand
he's in job transition very soon, so I can
understand why not, but we had hoped that one of
those folks would be here.
And we had hoped that there would be some
Committee transition accomplished while we were up

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here with senior leadership available, but in
typical government style, those things didn't quite
make it to the top of the stack before we got here.
So we will proceed as we have with the
current Committee in its current state and see how
and when the changes occur. We know from the
tasking that we were given last time, we know from
that that there's transition to be expected and
have no qualms that it's time for some transition
on the Committee.
And Hal and Rhonda and Bob Certain were
our appointed, quote, "subcommittee," if we are
allowed to have those.
DR. CORNUM: Working group, I think we
were described as.
DR. AMBROSE: Working group.
CHAIRMAN McNISH: Working group. I still
call them--it's still a subcommittee, as far as I'm
concerned.
[Laughter.]
REV. DR. CERTAIN: Let the minutes show it
was a working group.

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CHAIRMAN McNISH: Boomer said we could
have a subcommittee so we called--
DR. KUSHNER: I like task force.
DR. CORNUM: Task force was good too.
CHAIRMAN McNISH: Task force. Yeah, that
doesn't--that's not like a sub- mariner or a
subcommittee, I guess. In any case, they produced
a very-well thought-out report and recommendations,
which will be, Hal is going to share with us
tomorrow, I think, and, Hal, I hadn't discussed
with you, but what do you think about the idea of
trying to get everybody a copy of it to think about
it tonight before your presentation tomorrow?
DR. KUSHNER: Yeah, I thought about it.
That was my plan.
CHAIRMAN McNISH: Okay. Good. Good.
DR. KUSHNER: I was going to use the hotel
business center to get it done.
CHAIRMAN McNISH: Okay. So let everybody
have that, read it, mull over it. What you got,
Tom?
MR. HANTON: If they call you a

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