this very important conference and i want to start by recognizing one of our great health leaders, pam hyde, who leads this incredibly important agency on substance abuse and mental health services and as pam said, our strategy among other things is to not only look at the cutting edge research and best practices but actually to collaborate and leverage assets across the federal government. i've been really pleased at the level of cooperation and collaboration with two of the military partners, secretary shinseki and i know that janet kemp is here with the office of mental health and that has been a terrific effort on all kinds of fronts, this being among them, but we're working on veterans homelessness and a whole series of activities, and also, secretary leon panetta, who will follow me because he has a deep and personal interest in this area. i don't think there's any more important work than taking care of those who have stood up to protect our nation. our men and women in uniform put their lives on the line for us each and every day and we need to be there for them when they return. no

so i would like to start off by introducing pam hyde. miss pamela hyde was nominated by president barack obama and confirmed by the u.s. senate in november of 2009 as administrator of the substance abuse and mental health services administration, a public health agency within the department of health and human services. she has a long history of serving america through various public health and mental health administration roles and has a biography in the program which i hope you will all read and spend some time, but in order to move on with the program, i'm going to bring up pam. thank you. >> good morning. that was a challenge. i need to do better about my step exercises. it's very good to be with you here. thank you, janet. it's very good to be with the department of defense and the veterans administration and all the parts of the military who are working on issues that we care a lot about at samsa. we are very interested in the issue of suicide nationwide and in preventing that issue, and i want to take just a minute to sort of set

i want to start by recognizing what our great health leaders, pam hyde, who leads this important agencyand mental health services. as she said, our strategy is not only to look at the cutting edge research and best practices, but actually to collaborate and leverage assets across the federal government. i have been really pleased at the level of cooperation and collaboration with two of the military partners. secretary sinn secchi -- secretary shinsecki and janet kemp and secretary leon panetta who will follow me because he has a deep and personal interest in this area. i do not think there is any more important work than taking care of those who have stood up to protect our nation. men and women in uniform put their lives on the line for us and we need to be there for them when they return. what we know about being snapshot of soldiers today is that they carry an especially heavy burden and have over the last decade. longer deployments, more frequent redeployments, shorter blake's -- shorter breaks between. the pressure has been not only on the active-duty military, but on their famili