Hope for the Journey -- Women's Health Research at VA

WASHINGTON, May 11 /PRNewswire/ -- For more than a decade, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has made women's gender-specific health care needs a major priority. VA researchers are looking at a broad range of health conditions related to women Veterans, including chronic diseases, reproductive health, cancer, mental health issues, military occupational hazards, and amputations.

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Today, there are more than 1.8 million women Veterans, and their percentage of the total number of America's Veterans is increasing. VA's research on women's health issues helps improve its ability to care for women Veterans of all eras.

Joel Kupersmith, MD, VA Chief Research and Development Officer notes that "VA's commitment to women's health care research is a long-standing one -- aggressively taking steps in the 1990s to increase the participation of women Veterans in VA studies and declaring women's health issues as a research priority." Elizabeth Yano, PhD, Deputy Director and Senior Scientist at the VA Greater Los Angeles Health Services Research and Development (HSR&D) Center of Excellence for the Study of Healthcare Provider Behavior, offers a special invitation to women Veterans to visit VA: "You served our country, so now it's time for us to serve you," says Yano.

VA offers comprehensive, high-quality primary health care services and many other dedicated programs for women Veterans, and offers a special sensitivity to their unique health care needs.

Among the goals of VA's ongoing research initiatives in women's health are to develop improved therapeutic strategies for health issues important to women; to enhance the specialized skills of primary care providers who treat women Veterans; and to create the best possible health care strategies to deal with family and reproductive issues, including preventive measures to avoid birth defects in children of women Veterans.

Recent VA studies in women's health have looked at:

• The long-term health outcomes of Vietnam service. VA researchers are studying lifetime and current incidence of conditions including PTSD, depression, diabetes, heart disease, and disability in women who served our nation in uniform during the Vietnam era. This study is the most comprehensive ever undertaken on the long-term health outcomes of women Veterans who served during this time.
• Immunization rates among older women Veterans. A VA research team learned that older men were more likely than older women to receive immunizations against influenza and pneumonia. The researchers said that older female Veterans may benefit from educational outreach on this topic.
• Metabolic syndrome and cognitive risk. In a study of nearly 5,000 post-menopausal women in 25 countries, a research team including VA investigators found that older women with metabolic syndrome (a combination of medical conditions that can include high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes) have a substantially increased risk of cognitive impairment.

Jennifer Olds served on active duty in the U.S. Army from 1990 to 1992, during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. She participated in another landmark VA study, the largest randomized clinical trial ever undertaken involving women Veterans with PTSD. The study compared two therapeutic approaches for treatment of the disorder.

"I found that this experience encouraged many changes in me," Olds says. "Today I am able to do things that I have not been able to do in a long time."

Deborah Gano is one of about a quarter million women who now receive world-class health care from VA. "I'm able to come here for all my health care, and that's an awesome thing," she says.

To find your nearest VA health care facility, visit www.va.gov/landing2_locations.htm. For information on VA programs and services for women Veterans, go to www.va.gov/womenvet. For more information on how VA Research is improving Veterans' lives, go to www.research.va.gov.

SOURCE Department of Veterans Affairs