Creating a family can be challenging for everyone, but most especially for our active-duty military families. From trying through the separation of deployment to needing fertility support not paid for by TRICARE, it is not always easy to start a family. The Military Family Building Coalition (MFBC) and WINFertility are working together to support military families in a big way.
For MFBC co-founders, Ellen Gustafson and Katy Bell Hendrickson, the issue of family building is personal. Ellen was born with a hereditary autoimmune disorder which causes fatality for male babies in utero, which could be traced back five generations in her female family members.
“I did have a stillborn while my husband was deployed,” she shared. When she was told IVF and a gender test would be her only way of preventing it from occurring again, she called TRICARE. “Their blanket answer was, “‘No, we don’t cover non-coital reproductive assistance.’”
Despite her attempting to reason with the company regarding her medical need to use IVF, she was rejected. The other option was to go on a waiting list for one of the six military treatment facilities, but only after proving she and her spouse had tried naturally for a year without success.
“I wanted to change this because I was really angry that my own experience meant that a lot of other people were definitely going through this too,” Gustafson said. “I did six rounds of IVF while my husband was deploying very frequently.”
She and her husband, an active-duty Navy officer, spent $120,000 to build their family. They would conceive their oldest daughter naturally and need IVF to have their twins, a girl and a miracle baby boy.
“In my pregnancy with the twins, some friends of mine in my husband’s community told me there was another woman I really needed to meet,” Gustafson said. “You are never going to throw enough money at military families to solve this until policy changes and this becomes basic healthcare. With that in mind, we started thinking about how we could build the right community of people to understand this problem and help us advocate to make change while helping military families today.”
The two went all in on building and creating the Military Family Building Coalition. There, members and spouses can access education, a support network and an organization advocating for congressional policy changes. Gustafson shared how they quickly began developing partnerships with other military organizations and also approached companies in the private sector, too.
WINFertilty was one of them. Established in 1997, the company has been a leader in education and support for family building. It’s CEO and president, Dr. Roger Shedlin, is a passionate advocate for managed fertility benefits being implemented.
After meeting with MFBC, he and his team were all in on piloting a unique program to support the military community. “We think a community like the naval aviators may be facing it a little more acutely because of deployment and training,” Shedlin explained. “When I look at the sacrifices military families make, there’s no more deserving population in our view…our goal here is to see the impact it has on the performance, recruitment, retention, and performance of this population. We think it’ll help us continue to have the best military in the world.”
WINFertility is now offering complimentary reproductive clinical advocacy and fertility benefit management services for female Naval aviators and Naval aviation personnel. Through data collection and advocacy, both organizations hope it opens the door for TRICARE changes to support family building for all those who serve.
Shedlin detailed the service provided and the vital impact it can and does have on the family building process. From reproductive endocrinology nurses available 24 hours a day for questions, it’s more than managed care.
“Understanding that this is not purely throwing dollars at the situation, it’s growing dollars plus clinical advocacy that, in effect, pays for itself by reducing the complications and making this more efficient,” he said.
Gustafson believes implementing a managed fertility benefit can not only impact force readiness and quality of life but also put the Armed Forces at the forefront of advancement.
“In medical advances, the military has led society with prosthetics. They’ve led society in eye surgeries,” she explained. “You have a population of especially women who want to serve, same-sex couples who want to serve and men who want to serve who maybe are damaged by their military service or who are separated from their partners because of military service. Your population specifically benefits from medical innovation in reproductive health.”