We have several objectives around this idea about the demographic information and
knowledge related to veterans.
Today's veterans is quite a diverse landscape, they represent
more than 25% of the veterans today or from minority populations.
We have currently 21 million people in the United States
who have been active in the military.
And one of the most interesting things over the course of the last decade is
the increasing number of female veterans in the U.S. population.
But we have to get to our veteran status first and we have to understand that
people are actively serving in the military and this gives you a nice,
demographic background of the five branches of the military.
Those include the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard.
The interesting thing about the Coast Guard,
one has to remember is that that's Homeland Security sponsored organizations,
where the others are part of the Department of Defense.
The other interesting thing to know is that those who are active duty are split
between those who are active full time, and those who are active part time.
The difference between active duty and those in the Guard, or the Reserves,
would be the same concept around, do you have a full time military job or
do you have a part time military job?
Those in the National Guard and the Reserves have other jobs,
other activities that fill their days, and take some time out to serve our country,
they typically seek care in the community at civilian facilities, and then we have
active duty servicemen, who will engage in daily activities of the military and
seek healthcare to a variety of different installments across the world.
We need to understand those of us who did not participate in the military,
that there is a culture.
One of the most important ones to understand from the get
go is that there's an idea of rank and structure that's very clear.
There's officers that are approximately 17 to 20% of the active forces,
they're often the leaders.
They're responsible for the activities of their units, and
if you want to think about other social demographics,
they almost always have a 4-year college degree.
The remaining are enlisted active duty military folks who trained,
who often entered the military after high school or a few years afterwards,
and actually trained in a special area under the direction of an officer.
Those of us who need to refresh our US history,
there have been active conflicts since World War II and
it's interesting and important to know that since World War II,
there have been several periods where we've been in active military conflicts.
Those include the Korean War, the Vietnam War, Persian Gulf or
Desert Storm, and Afghanistan and Iraq,
where we're currently sending down troops in those active areas of conflict.
As we think about veteran status, we have to get out of the military and
some of us don't really understand that process.
There is an average length of service for
those in the military that's often between two and six years,
depending on the branch, depending on what individuals had signed up for.
There's multiple discharge categories,
the most common being an honorable discharge, which is general.
And as you can see, there is other ones.
And one of the things that we'll talk about quite a bit is people start
to engage and need to have evidence of their eligibility for
the Veterans Health Administration is the DD Form 214,
and that's just their discharge papers that
say very clearly that they have a discharge from military service.