While the VA continues to battle long wait times, unsanitary conditions and accusations of causing veterans’ deaths, the agency is turning its attention to the needs of transgender veterans.

Rainbow-colored dog tags don the promotional poster for the new clinic at the Southern Arizona VA Health Care System in Tucson.

“We serve all who served: Excellent care has no boundaries. VHA is committed to serving Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Veterans,” the poster reads.

“A growing body of research shows the military is a magnet for biological males with gender issues who often try to quell their inner conflict through ‘hypermasculine’ pursuits, said Nadine Cole, a clinical psychologist on the local VA treatment team,” the Arizona Daily Star reports.

The paper also called them “macho occupations.”

Dr. Sonia Perez-Padilla says the clinic and related training for medical personnel is necessary because some don’t believe being transgender “is not a choice. It’s something innate.”

The VA provides treatments for veterans including hormone therapy, mental health care and pre- and post-operative care for sex-change surgery. At this point, taxpayers aren’t picking up the tab for the surgery, but Perez-Padilla thinks we will be “eventually.”

“In 2011, the VHA published a directive, that now, just supported, but mandated that every VA would provide comprehensive for all transgender and intersex veterans,” Perez-Padilla says.

Cole believes the suicide rate for transgender veterans is “20 times higher” than others. She says that’s because “veterans that are transgender are attracted to jobs in the military that out them at risk of trauma as well, so they may be in specialty Seal teams, those kinds of things,” she says.