Giving Compass' Take:

• RAND Corporation discusses the challenges that private health care providers face when trying to serve veterans, whether it's unfamiliarity with deployment-related stressors or addressing the unique needs of women vets.

• How can nonprofits and funders in the health care space provide more resources for veteran health care treatment and wellness? Which counseling programs might prove the most effective?

• Learn how one meditation app aims to help veterans tackle anxiety and loneliness.

Jordanna Mallach came home from Afghanistan with a rasping cough that she could not explain. She called it her Army asthma.

She had chalked it up to the strain of the deployment when it first started, when she would wake up gasping for breath as if something was squeezing the air from her lungs. But it didn't end with the deployment. Her civilian doctors were just as puzzled and powerless as she was. “They just didn't know what questions to ask,” she says now.

Her experience underscores what RAND researchers found when they surveyed hundreds of private-sector health care providers. Most lacked the specialized knowledge and training to treat veterans like Mallach. Few even asked their patients whether they had ever served in the military.

That raises a fundamental question as the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs shifts billions of dollars for veteran care to outside providers: Are those providers even ready?

Read the full article about how private health care providers could better serve veterans by Doug Irving at RAND Corporation.