Honoring Women’s History Month at Million Veteran Program

Learn about MVP’s research for women Veterans

Meet two Million Veteran Program (MVP) researchers who are using their skills to make discoveries for Veterans—and who want to share why it’s important for women to be included in medical research.  

Dr. Erika Wolf

Dr. Erika Wolf is a senior clinical investigator at the National Center for PTSD at the VA Boston Healthcare System and a professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Boston University.  

How does she use MVP’s data to help Veterans? 

Wolf studies how post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) affects aging and health. Her research looks at biological markers, called biomarkers, to see if PTSD speeds up aging and raises heart disease risk. 

“We are using MVP data to study how PTSD and other health and psychological conditions relate to accelerated biological aging—and how this data can be used to predict subsequent cardiovascular disease. The aim is to help Veterans have more years in good health and reduce the burden of age-related disease.” 

How does MVP close gaps in genetic research? 

MVP gives researchers a unique chance to improve Veterans’ health. It combines medical records, surveys and genetic data so we can ask questions that other studies cannot. This helps us find disease risks, understand how diseases work and create better ways to prevent them. 

“This allows us to serve our nation’s Veterans further, by identifying risk for future disease, understanding the biology of disease, and developing new approaches to intervene and prevent poor health outcomes.” 

Dr. Merry-Lynn McDonald

Dr. Merry-Lynn McDonald is a research health scientist in the Geriatrics Research Education and Clinical Center (GRECC) at the Birmingham Veterans Affairs Healthcare System and an associate professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

How is she using MVP’s data to make discoveries for Veterans? 

For close to 10 years, her research team has focused on “identifying genetic variants associated with osteoarthritis, post-traumatic osteoarthritis, joint replacement and response to rehabilitation.”  She works with data from MVP and other biobanks such as the UK biobank to find gene markers that raise risk and use this knowledge to improve treatments for Veterans. 

Why is it important for women to participate in MVP? 

“It is important to have women represented in medical research—both as scientists and participants—because up until recently, medical research has largely focused on men (hoping research findings would be generalizable to women). This oversight means we are missing relevant information on disease processes that are relevant to women.” 

Keep in touch with the Million Veteran Program!  

Visit the MVP website to take the new Military Experiences and Toxic Exposures Survey, read the latest research, access your MVP Participant Dashboard or join MVP today. Questions? Call us at 866-441-6075.