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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. This issue, “Culture Meets Science,” demonstrates the emotional and therapeutic value of Veterans owning their stories.
“Probably the worst part of the job was vehicle recovery. We’d have to pick up these vehicles, like Humvees, that had been hit by IEDs … on occasion they’d still be hot from the explosion, too hot to touch, and you can smell the burning flesh on the seats and everything.
“I can still smell it to this day, just talking about it.”
-- Army Veteran Ray Facundo
Joining VA’s photovoice project, From War to Home, hadn’t been an easy decision for Ray Facundo: it had taken another Veteran nearly three hours to talk him into it, to convince him the study was important and trustworthy.
Dr. Gala True is a VA researcher and anthropologist who also has a background as a folklorist. From War to Home was her first photovoice project, giving cameras to post-9/11 Veterans to photograph and share stories of military service, deployment, transitioning to civilian life, and healthcare.
“I made it clear that the Veterans weren’t just research subjects,” True said about her research proposal. “They’re collaborators. These are their stories. They own their stories. They will share their stories however they want, and they’ll be partners in figuring out how to disseminate the findings.”
“I really enjoyed being able to tell my story in a way that made sense to people,” Facundo said. “I saw the power of that.”
By helping to write papers and presenting on panels, Facundo has witnessed the breadth of issues affecting Veterans returning from deployment, including PTSD, substance abuse, family issues, suicide, and loneliness. He was so moved by the experience that he took a position as Coordinator of Student Veteran Services at Portland State University, where he served three years before becoming a project manager for Dr. True in New Orleans.
Today, Facundo is a health science specialist with the Seattle-Denver Center of Innovation for Veteran-Centered and Value-Driven Care and a project manager for the Growing Rural Outreach through Veteran Engagement (GROVE) Center.
Meanwhile, From War to Home continues to tour the country as a popular and successful exhibit of Veterans’ photos and accompanying narratives. Since its beginning in 2012, it has been installed at VA medical centers and other locations across the country, as well as being available online.
“Veterans are subject-matter experts,” said True. “You’ve got to engage the subject matter experts early and all the way through to get the best research outcomes.”
(From left) Ray Facundo, From War to Home volunteer; Dr. Sarah Ono, VA’s Center to Improve Veteran Involvement in Care (CIVIC); and Dr. Gala True, lead investigator of the photovoice project, stand amidst the exhibit they designed in collaboration with Veterans to explore the reintegration experiences of Veterans with traumatic brain injury.
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.
