Primary sources only
Every claim about VA benefits, presumptive conditions, rating rules, or filing deadlines is checked against the official primary record before publication: VA.gov and VA Public Health, the Code of Federal Regulations (Title 38), the Federal Register, and Congress.gov. Health and exposure claims are checked against the CDC, ATSDR, and the National Cancer Institute. We do not source benefits claims from law firm marketing pages, news aggregators, or other secondary sites.
Adversarial review before publication
Before a reference page or article goes live, every discrete factual claim in it is extracted and independently re-checked against the sources above, with the explicit goal of proving the draft wrong. Claims that cannot be verified are removed. Claims that are imprecise are corrected. This process regularly catches real errors before publication, including subtle ones: a diagnostic code that changed in a rating schedule revision, a filing deadline that has since passed, or a presumption attributed to the wrong law.
Dates you can check
VA policy changes through legislation and rulemaking, so accuracy decays. Our reference pages carry a visible last-reviewed date showing when their claims were last verified against the official record, and our VA policy changes log tracks the rule changes themselves, each entry linked to the Federal Register, statute, or VA announcement that made it.
Sources on every page
Reference pages and articles list the official sources behind them, so you can verify anything we say without taking our word for it. If a claim matters to your case, follow the source and confirm it, or bring it to a Veterans Service Officer.
Images and licensing
Photographs are public domain (largely U.S. government works) or openly licensed, with the source and credit recorded for every image we publish.
What we are not
This site is not medical advice and not legal advice, and we do not represent claimants. We verify what the official record says; we cannot tell you how it applies to your individual case. For medical questions, talk to your care team. For claims, an accredited Veterans Service Organization representative will help you free of charge.
Corrections
If you find an error, tell us in the comments on the affected page. Verified corrections are applied to the page itself, not buried in a footnote, and the page's last-reviewed date is updated.
See the VA policy changes log or learn more about this site.
This page is for informational purposes only and is not medical or legal advice. Consult a qualified professional about your health or benefits.