Kiggans focused on improving Navy’s mental health treatment

WASHINGTON, DC: This week, Congresswoman Jen Kiggans (VA-02) sat down with Briana Reilly from CQ to discuss her bill, H.R. 3373, the Sailor Standard of Care Act. You can read the story below and online:

As a Navy helicopter pilot-turned-geriatric nurse practitioner, freshman Rep. Jen Kiggans said she is bringing “a different perspective” to policymaking geared toward bolstering servicemembers’ access to mental health resources. 

That perspective — which shaped her approach to her newly introduced bill targeting Navy mental health care (HR 3373) — is also informed by Kiggans’ experience as a military spouse to a retired F-18 pilot and her representation of Virginia’s military-heavy 2nd District, which saw a number of sailor suicides at nearby installations in recent years. 

“How can I now be impactful going forward, using my background as a military member, as a Navy veteran, as a health care provider who has provided mental health care in settings and a person who really cares about that Navy mission?” Kiggans said in an interview at her Capitol office Tuesday. “What do we need to do to improve not just the suicide issue but the quality of life issue — for our sailors and all of our military members across the branches?” 

Those are questions Kiggans, who spent a decade in the Navy, plans to explore further this session — her first in Congress following her 2022 win in a closely watched election that flipped the seat from blue to red.  

One of her initial attempts comes in the form of the bill she introduced earlier this month. It contains a range of provisions that would require the Navy to create a dashboard to track quality of life programs like child care, health care and education; establish a standard operating procedure to respond to suicide clusters; and more. 

The legislation’s unveiling almost directly coincided with the Navy’s release last week of investigations into multiple suicides last year tied to the USS George Washington, which was undergoing an overhaul in Virginia’s Newport News shipyard, and the Mid-Atlantic Regional Maintenance Center at Naval Station Norfolk, where four sailors died by suicide within a few weeks last fall.  

Timed with those reviews and associated recommendations for improvement, Navy leaders concurrently put out a memo seeking to set “a new course for Navy quality of life service” to boost servicemember standards and mental health.   

Kiggans, who serves on the House Armed Services Committee, acknowledged that while some of the Navy’s suggestions overlap with language in her bill, she sees those recommendations as “a good roadmap” for potential future legislative fixes. 

Much of the language in Kiggans’ bill, which is already co-sponsored by five Republicans and five Democrats, including Reps. Robert C. Scott, D-Va., Rob Wittman, R-Va., and Jimmy Panetta, D-Calif., centers on limited duty sailors — the same class of individuals facing medical limitations or restrictions who were assigned to the Mid-Atlantic Regional Maintenance Center. 

Because limited duty sailors are removed from their mission and unable to be deployed for medical reasons, Kiggans likened the status to putting “somebody in limbo, to have them do a job that they didn’t sign up to do.” 

Among her proposals centering on those sailors are provisions to bolster their access to mental health providers and stipulate an initial mental health screening following an individual’s assignment to limited duty, with subsequent screenings to occur every 60 days, though Kiggans said she would be “happy to tweak that to make it more often.” 

The language, she said, aims to require “at least some amount of check-in that’s done periodically so we’re not just saying, ‘you’re limited duty, good luck.’”

Going forward, Kiggans said she’s hoping to include “parts of” the bill in the fiscal 2024 defense policy legislation (HR 2670), though she didn’t specify which provisions. 

The effort comes in the weeks after the Pentagon issued long-anticipated guidance seeking to boost troops’ access to mental health services stemming from a nearly year-and-a-half old provision known as the Brandon Act, named after Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class Brandon Caserta, who died by suicide in 2018 at the age of 21.

Kiggans said she views both her bill and the Brandon Act, which was included in the Fiscal 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (PL 117-81), as “another tool, another step in the right direction.” 

“Until we get this right, we need to continue to hear from all voices, from the Navy, from Congress,” she added.