Women Veterans: VA services coming to you
The Department of Veterans Affairs is bringing healthcare and benefits enrollment directly to women veterans through a new series of regional summits launching in 2026. The Center for Women Veterans, in partnership with the Office of Women's Health, will host Women Veterans Enrollment Regional Summits in five regions across the country to help women veterans connect with VA services they may not have accessed before. The first summit is scheduled for July 24-25, 2026, at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center in San Antonio, Texas, covering the Southwest Region.
The Center for Women Veterans serves as the VA's primary advocate for women veterans, working to ensure they receive equitable access to benefits and services. Despite the growing number of women who have served in uniform, millions of women veterans nationwide have not yet enrolled in VA healthcare or accessed the full range of benefits available to them. These summits represent a coordinated effort between multiple VA offices to remove barriers and create welcoming environments where women veterans can learn about and enroll in services without the intimidation or confusion that sometimes accompanies navigating the VA system for the first time.
This initiative targets women veterans who have never enrolled with the VA, those who stepped away from VA services and want to return, and those who are simply curious about what benefits might be available to them. The summits are designed to reach women veterans regardless of their service era, disability rating, or current relationship with the VA. Whether a veteran served during wartime or peacetime, has a service-connected disability or not, these enrollment events aim to connect every woman veteran with the resources she has earned through military service.
The summits will span five regions: Southwest, Southeast, Northeast, Midwest, and West, ensuring geographic coverage across the continental United States. Registration for each summit is free and available through an online portal. At these events, women veterans will meet representatives from the Veterans Health Administration, Veterans Benefits Administration, National Cemetery Administration, and other VA components who can provide guidance on healthcare enrollment, disability compensation, education benefits, home loans, and burial benefits. The VA emphasizes that attending women veterans themselves will help lead outreach efforts, creating peer-to-peer connections that build trust and encourage participation.
For disabled veterans, these summits offer a particularly valuable opportunity to ensure all service-connected conditions are properly documented and rated. Many women veterans, especially those from earlier service eras, may not realize that conditions developed during or aggravated by military service qualify for disability compensation and healthcare. The face-to-face format allows for personalized guidance that can be especially helpful when navigating complex claims or understanding how multiple benefits work together.
Women veterans interested in attending should visit the registration portal or check with their local VA medical center for information about which regional summit serves their area. Even veterans already enrolled in VA healthcare may benefit from attending to learn about benefits they haven't yet explored or to help bring other women veterans into the VA system. Veterans uncertain about their eligibility for any VA service should remember that eligibility rules are often broader than commonly understood, and these summits provide a no-pressure environment to ask questions and get accurate answers directly from VA staff.