Breaking: The DHA has cut lifesaving care for pregnant women, infants, children, special needs, select retirees, disabled veterans, government employees, & more!

With the New Year came a bombshell directive from the DHA demanding that military hospitals sever all access to routine & preventive care for government employees, contractors, & their families from Military Treatment Facilities in the Indo Pacific region. This directive was poor in timing, execution, & communication: Released less than a week after Open Enrollment ended to switch Federal Health Insurance plans, published to social media before Christmas weekend, with no direct communication to those affected, & then sneakily amended over the 4-day weekend prior to New Year’s Day. Military hospitals in Japan are now left with a vague boilerplate policy & no tools to mitigate the effects or provide solutions.

So what are we doing about it?

Thanks to your heartfelt support through 2,154 signatures, 68 promoters, 2,691 letters, and 637 shares, JCMA (that's us) pushed to gain the ear of the Undersecretary of Defense of Health Affairs, who held an emergency Access to Care Summit in mid-December. Several Pentagon-level agencies met to discuss the issues, read our advocacy package, & heard the stories of the deaths of 10 SOFA patients that have occurred within the last 2 years due to the unstable medical climate in Japan. Those who walked in concerned walked out alarmed, & many officials went back to work stating healthcare was their top priority.

We exposed that the DHA did not complete the required risk assessments before abandoning government workers & civilians overseas. We educated high-level authorities on an issue that should have been caught long ago...

Our health, safety, & security is at risk.

Meanwhile, the FY2023 NDAA has been released, and lo & behold, Congress is exploring phasing out the DHA. Do you blame them, with breaking news this week that the DHA failed to execute a clinic for military victims suffering from fuel leaks in Hawaii & failed to fix the key medical screening portal that has been down for months amid a recruiting crisis? While we are pleased to see a new DHA director, we are committed to holding them & the agency accountable for “anywhere, anytime, support” as promised.

The DHA continues to cling to their strategy of ignoring civilian health to gain arbitrary cost-saving metrics. Instead of fixing broken systems such as billing practices responsible for years-late fees and price gouging patients & hospital staffing shortages, they have doubled down on creating more problems for themselves at the cost of trillions of dollars of government funding. Military hospital commanders (who answer directly to the DHA) have only a mirror-surface understanding of how to realistically apply this new directive that is void of any hippocratic standard. While some installations have formed a strong sense of unity & held public forums, others remain silent for fear of not having the answers & facing public backlash. 

So DHA has no plan… but we do, & we have a voice. 

So, who are we?

We are Japan Civilian Medical Advocacy - a grassroots network of volunteers currently stationed in Japan on behalf of the Department of Defense who realize the massive risk to U.S. government operations & to individual families due to the DHA administration reorganization of military treatment facilities in Japan.

Our mission is to regain & improve access to quality healthcare for all members of the DoD serving abroad, to uphold the standards of practices set forth by the Joint Commission, & to protect the personnel that support the mission of the U.S. Armed Forces & National Defense Strategy (NDS) of the United States of America.

Our outreach (with your support) has preserved levels of access to mental health medication, EpiPens, & contraception for DOD employees & their families in Japan. We presented research on fetal & maternal mortality risks disproportionately affecting the Okinawa community to the DHA. We assisted patients suffering from major misdiagnoses in filing complaints to the Joint Commission. We facilitated medical evacuations for some found to be in need of immediate treatment. We tracked hundreds of denials of care & provided the evidence to Congress. But there is far more work we intend to do.

Every day we continue to petition the federal & state departments, reach out to media, & connect with our community. We speak up to save the lives of Americans stationed in Japan. We don't take days off - & we cannot do what we do without your help. 

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YOUR GOVERNMENT WORKERS THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT!