Talk to the Veterans Crisis Line now
An official website of the United States government
Summary: Veteran Voices in Research showcases the people and programs that foster Veteran engagement and demonstrates how Veteran collaborators improve the quality, relevance, and impact of VA research. Since 2016, VA's Health Systems Research (HSR) program has required investigators to include Veterans and caregivers as active participants in shaping their studies—not simply as subjects of them. This practice, known as Veteran engagement, means involving Veterans at every stage of research. This issue, “Better Reach,” shows how involving Veterans early can expand recruitment and partnership opportunities.
Owners and staff at Reno Guns & Range, shortly after receiving suicide prevention training through The Armory Project, an initiative co-founded by VA Investigator Gala True and Army Veteran Caleb Morse to prevent Veteran firearm suicides. Nearly all pictured are Veterans and family members.
Many VA researchers have stories about how engaging with Veterans opened doors for their study, but some mean it literally. Gala True, PhD, a researcher with VA's South Central Mental Illness, Research, Education, and Clinical Center, was looking for new partners in The Armory Project—a program she co-founded with Army Veteran Caleb Morse to prevent suicide by providing safe firearm storage away from home. When she went to approach a gun store owner about joining the project, she brought a Veteran, Gary, with her. "The two of us just talked to this gun store owner and slowly won his trust—but if Gary hadn't been there with me, I don't know that I would have even gotten into the guy's office," True said.
Building trust in some communities would be next to impossible without Veterans. Veteran engagement doesn't just improve the science; it fundamentally changes who participates in research by improving recruitment, earning access in skeptical or hard-to-reach communities, and ensuring diverse and overlooked populations are represented. It can also ensure VA’s research findings reach the Veteran communities they're meant to serve, and shape how researchers think about who they're trying to reach in the first place.
Army Veteran Kathryn Washington joined her first Veteran engagement group (she now works with four) after a decade-long struggle to find a diagnosis for her sarcoidosis, an inflammatory disease. When she first met the other members of the Chronic Pain Veteran Engagement Panel, she immediately noticed the variety in the room.
"The researchers were intentional about including a range of Veteran perspectives, so the study would actually reflect the population it was meant to serve,” Washington said. “That stood out to me — it showed how much stronger the work becomes when those perspectives are included from the beginning."
"How do you reach a population that is already harder to diagnose or gets a later diagnosis than other Veterans?” said Kelty Fehling, an investigator with HSR's Seattle-Denver Center of Innovation and co-leader of the Growing Rural Outreach Through Veteran Engagement (GROVE) Center. “How (do you hone) materials to reach this population and make sure they're represented in this study?"
Fehling emphasized the importance of making sure a research study reaches all the Veterans who could benefit from it, and ensuring that racial and ethnic minority Veterans can see themselves in the recruitment materials. She advises researchers that before going to a required Veteran Research Engagement Board, the research team has a very specific discussion about everyone they need to reach, how they’ll do it, and how Veterans can help them to reach other Veterans.
The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the Department of Veterans Affairs or the United States government.
