Hello, everyone, and thank you for the opportunity to speak here today.

As our name suggests, at the Atlas Institute we work with military and RCMP veterans and their families, along with service providers and researchers, to identify and close research gaps and mobilize evidence widely to improve mental health care and supports for those who have given so much to Canada.

Key to our approach has been how we engage with veterans and families and those who work with them. We continuously strive to ensure that the voices of lived experience are embedded in our work.

On our staff, we currently have two strategic advisers for veterans and two strategic advisers for families. We're adding a new position soon of a strategic adviser for women veterans, to ensure a clear lens on women veterans' issues through all we do.

We have four community-based reference groups composed of veterans, veteran families, service providers and researchers, respectively, from across Canada. We have endeavoured to have a makeup that ensures diversity, including gender diversity, as well as service, family structures and geography, among others. Their influence is key to how we operate organizationally. We invite input from these groups to influence our strategic planning and work planning processes.

We also bring lived experience to the fore through our board, our many project advisory committees and our cadre of lived experience volunteers, which is a 33-member group and growing. It's representative of different veteran and family perspectives from across Canada. Of them, currently, about one-third are CAF women veterans.

We also apply an IDEA lens to our work—that's inclusivity, diversity, equity and accessibility. We recognize the importance of bringing together people with different voices, experiences, expertise and identities, including gender identities, to better understand, respond to and serve veteran and family mental health needs, including those of women veterans.

The topic of women veterans is of significant interest to our stakeholders, and we at the Atlas Institute recognize that this warrants special attention. One in six veterans is a woman. There are 75,000 women veterans in Canada. Despite the number of women who serve, the system supporting both the CAF and the RCMP was initially designed for men.

We know there are issues that have impacted the experience of women and that continue to impact their life after service as well. For example, women veterans face different mental health issues from men veterans. Research has shown that women CAF veterans are more likely to report a difficult transition out of the military than men CAF veterans.

There is clearly a significant need for immediate action in multiple areas, such as care, research and access. There's a need, through research and advocacy, to better understand women veterans' mental health needs and experiences with service systems, so that tangible change in both policy and legislation, if needed, can be made, and so that women veterans' well-being can improve. As such, we commend this committee for this intensive study, which prioritizes understanding the unique needs of women veterans.

I will turn this over now to my colleague, Dr. Sara Rodrigues, Atlas's director of applied research, to speak to some of the work we have undertaken to understand the needs of women veterans, and to some of the exciting work we're set to embark on as we make this an organizational priority.