Daniel Perkins, professor of family resiliency and policy and principal scientist and founder of the Clearinghouse for Military Family Readiness at Penn State, was recently invited to serve on the Joint State Government Commission’s Advisory Committee on the Coordination of Veterans Services.
Despite the thousands of service entities available for Pennsylvania veterans, the coordination, cooperation and oversight of these services has been a difficulty the commonwealth has faced year after year. Senate Resolution 170 was amended and adopted last year to address this problem through the establishment of the advisory committee.
Perkins and other experts dedicated to supporting service members and veterans on the advisory committee will work closely with the State Government Commission to review and analyze laws, regulations, policies and procedures to better coordinate federal state, local and nonprofit programs that serve veterans in Pennsylvania and beyond.
One of the five primary objectives is to identify models currently being used for interorganizational communication within the veteran service community throughout Pennsylvania and within other states. All of the objectives aim to improve the distribution of the resources available and make the presentation and volume of veteran services less overwhelming to those needing them.
Within 12 months of their establishment, the committee will report all findings to the Pennsylvania Senate with the intention of bettering conditions and outcomes for veterans across the country.
Aside from his work with the Clearinghouse, Perkins also is a co-principal investigator on a large-scale longitudinal study of post-911 transitioning veterans, titled The Veteran Metrics Initiative. His work has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, University of Arizona, Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency, Wallace Foundation, United States Department of Agriculture, the Department of Defense, the Four Service branches (Air Force, Army, Navy, Marine Corps), and several private foundations.
The Clearinghouse is an applied research center committed to advancing the health and well-being of service members and their families. The Clearinghouse takes a solution-oriented approach that includes writing research reports, conducting applied research studies, building workforce expertise through training and resource provision, implementing and evaluating evidence-informed programs and practices, and delivering objective data and policy-relevant findings so that decisions are based on the best science and evidence available. The Clearinghouse is located within Penn State’s Social Science Research Institute.
The Veterans Metrics Initiative research was managed by the Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine, Inc. (HJF); and collaboratively sponsored by the Bob Woodruff Foundation, Health Net Federal Services, The Heinz Endowments, HJF, Lockheed Martin Corporation, May and Stanley Smith Charitable Trust, National Endowment for the Humanities, Northrop Grumman, Philip and Marge Odeen, Prudential, Robert R. McCormick Foundation, Rumsfeld Foundation, Schultz Family Foundation, Walmart Foundation, Wounded Warrior Project, Inc., and the Veterans Health Administration Health Services Research and Development Service.