Research

Are you a Veteran with a history of childhood abuse, neglect, or household dysfunction? Then you may be at a higher risk for problematic alcohol or drug use, especially if you are a woman Veteran.

Thanks to innovative research at the Baltimore VA, older Veterans are making strides — literally — in their ability to move about, stay balanced, prevent falls and get up from a fall if they do have one.

Hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) — first used in the 1930s to treat decompression sickness in deep sea divers — is now being offered through VA to a small number of Veterans diagnosed with PTSD. It’s the latest effort from VA’s Center for Compassionate Innovation (CCI) to promote promising treatments for chronic health conditions that may resist traditional therapy.

“Our work will significantly enhance our abilities for early detection, and optimize and individualize breast cancer screening for all women Veterans and women in general.”

Rory Cooper was honored for his work designing innovative wheelchairs and other assistive technologies, which have markedly improved the mobility and quality of life for hundreds of thousands of Veterans and other people with disabilities.

The research is centered on cardiovascular tissue engineering, a way of creating artificial pieces of blood vessels and heart tissue using bioengineering principles.

The national research project began in 2011 and currently is the largest genomic database in the world with nearly 600,000 Veteran volunteers nationwide.

Dr. Clifford Cho, a physician-researcher at the Ann Arbor VA studies cancer and specializes in treating Veterans with melanoma, a common skin cancer.

The study has been one of the world's largest and most rigorous trials comparing the two methods of heart bypass surgery. It was sponsored by VA's Cooperative Studies Program.

VA research finds parallels between concussive injury experienced during contact sports and exposure to blast and concussive injury experienced by Veterans.

A Louisiana VA researcher is the principal investigator in groundbreaking research focusing on gender differences and the role of male and female hormones in diabetes.

Delivering genetic information to the patient via an app is something that no other health care organization has done. It makes personalized medicine a reality for Veterans.