Supporting the mental health of military families and their children

The Bob Woodruff Foundation, a philanthropic organization that is dedicated to supporting veterans and their families, recently announced a new grant made to the Steven A. Cohen Military Family Center at NYU Langone Health to provide mental health services to military families and children. Nationally, the foundation has invested $1 million to military children’s mental health.

New York Nonprofit Media spoke with Anne Marie Dougherty, CEO of Foundation, about the work the organization has done regarding military children’s mental health, housing for veterans and what can be done to solve these issues.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Tell me about the BWF.

The Bob Woodruff Foundation is a national organization. We were founded by the Woodruff family after Bob Woodruff, who was the newly named anchor of ABC New World News, reporting on the war in Iraq back in 2006. Bob wanted to be on the ground to tell the story as accurately as possible. Unfortunately, the vehicle he was in hit a roadside bomb. He was catastrophically wounded and suffered a severe traumatic brain injury. He and his family credit the fact that he lived through this to the brave soldiers and medics who literally risked their own lives to save his, and then ultimately transported him through the military medical healthcare system so that he was able to recuperate in a military hospital. Their family was just really grateful that Bob lived through such a traumatic event. While he was in a coma and then in the acute phases of recovery, they met a lot of other young combat-wounded vets who were on the same floor of the hospital, who didn't have all the extra support and resources that the Woodruff family had because ABC News was taking care of all the extra things. He was getting this world-class care. They felt like there was a bit of an inequity outside of this amazing medical care that the military was providing for people to be able to be at the bedside for somebody who was wounded. And so fast forward, the family said, “If Bob makes it through this, if there's anything we can do to give back and show our thanks, we will. We would love to try and provide some extra resources and support to those military families who are going through something similar to Bob in terms of being wounded.” 

And that was the idea of the foundation. It really started as a kitchen table operation and an act of generosity. Fast-forward, almost 18 years now, and we have invested over $160 million to support veterans and military families. Our mission is to help service members, veterans and their families to have stable and successful futures. That's sort of a broad definition because as time has gone on, the needs have evolved. And there is no one-size-fits-all all veteran or family situation. We've just really tried to prioritize helping veterans and service members who have the most acute needs and make sure that they have the support structure to manage through what could be a rough part of their lives.

I would love to hear more about the new grant made to the Steven A. Cohen Military Family Center at NYU Langone Health.

We go around the country raising awareness and funds so that we can make grants to best-in-class, world-class organizations that are working in their communities to support the veterans who live and work there, and there is no better organization than the Steven A. Cohen military family clinic at NYU Langone. We recently provided a grant with them, and our goal was to provide evidence-based assessment and treatment to improve the mental health outcomes and executive functioning for 49 veterans with TBI, ADHD and other neurocognitive challenges. Mental health is the number one issue, not only in New York City, but also around the country that our veteran community is facing. And there are a variety of ways that you can tackle supporting people. It's an incredible program. We're really proud to be funding it, and I'm excited for the 49 veterans who will be able to go through the program to get the help that they need.

Please discuss what the foundation is doing to help military children and families at this time and why that’s important.

There are unique stressors on military kids, and if you take two steps back, mental health is the number one issue that veterans are facing. When we really started to understand that, we saw that there's also an impact on spouses, caregivers, and then just this subset of people, our military kids, our national treasure. Some of the unique circumstances of the military lifestyle just make it a little bit trickier to get them the help that they need. You have frequent move and we have a national shortage of providers. So, it can be difficult to move to a new town and then get on the list to see a therapist that is trained in military cultural competency and understands what you're going through. If you're moving all the time, you know you're going to be at the bottom of the list to see a provider. We're working on one end of the spectrum, to help military kids get access to the support that they need and raise awareness about that issue. And then on the other side, we're working on helping create a pipeline of well-trained clinical providers to sort of tackle it from both ends of the spectrum. 

It's the stress of having a parent deployed. In the case of someone who's wounded, it's the stress of their parent becoming the caregiver. Therefore the kids potentially having less time with their parents. Someone's less available to drive them to activities, and then for a lot of families across the board, with COVID, people had unplanned wage loss. So when you have little to no emergency fund, which is the case for a lot of young enlisted families, and your parents are worried about money and making tough decisions, “Can I pay my rent?” “Can I put food on the table?,” “I have a deployment coming up, what is our childcare going to look like?” All of that is felt by the kids. Making sure that they can have access to high-quality, trained clinical providers is one of the things that we are hard at work at.

What does the role of the community (teachers, physicians, friends etc…) look like when it comes to supporting the mental health of military families?

That question's so insightful, because the role of the community is the safety net for military kids. On the other hand, it can be a challenge. Even through the frequency of moves, you end up being the new kid in school, which may mean that the teachers, the principal, and the coaches, may not know you or know what your life circumstances are. On the other hand, when we know that a military kid has a meaningful connection with a coach, a teacher, a guidance counselor, or a friend's parents, that can help with their overall sense of well-being. Kids, military kids in this example, want to feel a sense of belonging. They want to feel safe. They want to know what adult they can call on if they're having an issue, and they want to have friends. Being able to participate in after-school activities and be able to afford camp during the summer, and things that many of their peers may be able to do, being able to bridge that gap is something that makes an enormous difference. We hear anecdotally that even one adult taking interest in a military kid, either through something as formal as a mentorship program, as we do with an organization based in New York called Tuesday's Children, or through after-school activities and connecting with that music teacher, like a program we support nationally called Our Military Kids, that interest from even one person in their community can be the difference between the success and fulfillment of that child as they navigate through their life or through them really struggling with their mental health.

According to a 2023 report by Services for the Underserved, 13% of homeless New Yorkers are veterans, while 1.5 million veterans are considered at-risk of homelessness. What else could we be doing as a society to be helping our veterans so they’re well supported?

The statistics about homeless veterans are sobering, and it's something that the Woodruff Foundation has really worked to try and understand and help make a difference. At the end of the day, a lot of the issues that some veterans face, they're interconnected. So you'll see that there's usually some correlation between homelessness, mental health struggles, lack of employment and food insecurity. If you solve one there might still be other issues that are connected. So if you look at the root cause of why is this veteran homeless? Is it because they have untreated mental health issues that cause them to lose their job, therefore they weren't able to pay their rent, therefore they don't have a full pantry of food, so now they're worried about where their next meal is? You can see how these things can be really interconnected. If you work with a homeless veteran to get connected to a program like the one at NYU Langone we were talking about, then you have an opportunity to really help that person get back on their feet. And that's what we say at the Bob Woodruff Foundation, about wanting to help veterans have stable and successful futures. 

The foundation is a laser-focused philanthropic entity with a specific purpose and serving a specific population. Do you feel that is a strength of the BWF?

We have evolved from the origin story where the Woodruff family wanted to focus on combat-wounded vets with the hidden wounds of war, PTSD, and traumatic brain injury. This is back in 2006, when those acronyms, even TBI, that wasn't something that was widely conversed about. It was an issue that we still had a lot to learn about. And then what we learned over time is that. Just looking at someone with a traumatic brain injury, they may have other mental health struggles or physical health struggles. That kind of goes back to that ethos of  what is the whole person, and what is the root cause of what that person is dealing with, and how can we help them have stable and successful futures? In some ways, I feel like we're really laser-focused on the veteran community. And then, on the other hand, the deeper we get into this work, and the more we learn about the interconnectedness of these issues, we're really trying to do as much as we possibly can. It's a strength to stay true to your mission and continue to refine your craft, as long as you are with the focus that you continue to learn and evolve as the marketplace changes, and as the science evolves, the needs may change.