Thank you very much.
Good morning, everyone. I'm David Pedlar, scientific director of the Canadian Institute for Military and Veteran Health Research. I am here with my colleague, Dr. Heidi Cramm, who is also amongst Canada's leaders in research around military and veterans' families.
For those of you who aren't familiar with us, we're called CIMVHR as well. We exist to enhance the lives of Canadian military personnel, veterans, and their families by harnessing the national capacity for research. Since 2010, CIMVHR has developed a research network of over 1,500 researchers from 43 Canadian member universities and eight global affiliates, who have agreed to work together with us in addressing the health research requirements of our military personnel, veterans, and their families.
The institute works in close relationship with and has garnered continuous support from practitioners, government, and industry representatives, as well as philanthropists and other groups of caring Canadians that strengthen our foundation. I should also mention that I spent over 15 years as research director at Veterans Affairs Canada. During my years as research director, one of my areas of focus was the transition from military service to civilian life. On that topic, I want to make three brief points that I want to highlight as we start our work today.
First, having worked closely with military personnel and veterans for many years face to face, I think the culture shift is a key concept that we have to take into consideration. We all go through major life transitions—through adulthood, in health, and with losses in our lives—but in the military life-course what is unique is the shift from the civilian to military culture at entry, and then from military to post-military life at release. This shift from military to post-military identity is a challenge for most, but can be profoundly disorienting for some, especially when their release is unplanned or undesired.
The second point I want to make is that there is no internationally accepted construct for defining what successful transition is to life after military service, so I think we need one. I would recommend that the committee consider that. We need to think about what are the priorities or the areas of effort that we need to focus on, and they need to be defined. I was engaged in that work and this task for over five years at Veterans Affairs Canada, but also outside Veterans Affairs.
I like a seven-domain framework that defines the domains as employment and purpose of activity in life; health, with a number of dimensions; finances; housing; social integration; life skills preparedness; and, the social environment that veterans release into. If we don't have a framework, we don't have a comprehensive approach to understanding transition. You have to define a framework in order to identify what areas you want to measure. For me, this is a critical piece that needs to be put in place for a full discussion around what successful transition means.
The final point I want to underline is that veterans' families also have to be part of this focus in terms of how we define transition and success.
Those are my opening remarks. Heidi and I look forward to questions from the committee today.