Greetings Rats. While you were out enjoying your summer, a truly once in a generation Veteran rights & advocacy event occurred here in Washington DC: the enactment of the Promise To Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act. BLUF: the PACT Act may well apply to you.

A caution: if you conflate The PACT Act with burn pits, you will look right past key provisions of this new law. Please don’t do that. Stay with me for a minute while I unpack a few key ideas associated with The PACT Act and how it may help you or someone you know.

Yes, the Act is indeed named for SFC Heath Robinson, United States Army, a fellow GWOT Vet, who like me and other Rats, served downrange in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

But did you know that The PACT Act also contains important additives for SEA Vets exposed to Agent Orange? Or Vets who had low does radiation exposures while performing site cleanup in several places in the 1970s? Then there is the big Desert Storm cohort in RRVA. If any of this is you, did you know you have added time to submit claims for conditions associated with your TDY service in/over Iraq and surrounding countries?

What made The PACT Act a once in a generation effort was its sweep: from Vietnam all the way through the Post-9/11 generation(s). Where do you go to read more? This one is easy: www.va.gov/PACT. Folks, it’s that simple. What if you submitted a claim for service connection and a disability award and it was previously denied? Resubmit. ASAP. How do you do that? It’s called a Supplemental Claim and you can locate it at this link: https://www.vba.va.gov/pubs/forms/VBA-20-0995-ARE.pdf Info on Supplemental Claims and submission instructions are found on the 20-0995 form and again, at www.va.gov/PACT. 

Oh, one more thing…I got an invitation to attend the signing of The PACT Act at The White House. It was an inspiring, humbling experience. It seems that in American Veteran benefit law, there’s always someone who lost his/her life and whose story is attached to that act or law. And, as we’ve seen time and time again, it’s the suffering of families…who also serve with us. The PACT Act is no different. 

In closing, I cannot write enough about VA Secretary Denis McDonough. You probably did not know this, but during his tenure at the VA, he has doubled the number of staff epidemiologists and cancer researchers. He did not wait for The PACT Act to show up on his desk before he acted. However, with The PACT Act’s $400 billion (that’s with a “B”) funding, the VA can convert temporary medical researcher and scientist civil-service positions to permanent positions (to keep the research momentum going) and add yet more research positions to further enlarge medical testing and laboratory capacity. The plain truth is we don’t know what is behind the spike in cancers among military aviators. But as we tell our RRVA story and get things done here in DC, precious new VA analytic, scientific, and medical capacity is flowing into place; made possible by The PACT Act. This same VA scientific capacity will be brought to bear on aviator cancers—our passion, our focus. Get smart on The PACT Act. Meanwhile, go well.