VHA Innovation Experience

Beth Ripley, thanks for that kind introduction and, much more importantly, thank you for leading the Healthcare Innovation and Learning Team bringing so many life-changing innovations to the Veterans we serve.

Dr. Carolyn Clancy, good morning. You once told an audience that our most valuable asset at VA is our people—a force of caring, compassionate, innovative professionals deeply committed to the Veterans we serve. Truer words were never said, and you are one of our most valued professionals. Thank you for your leadership.

And Under Secretary for Health Shereef Elnahal, thank you so much for your leadership, your candid counsel, and your unyielding commitment to Veterans. Your visionary leadership couldn’t be more important than it is right now.

I want to especially acknowledge all our VA employees doing the heavy lifting on the frontlines of VA health care.

And last but certainly not least, our Veterans—could I have all the Veterans here stand and be recognized? We’re here for you.

Good morning, everyone! And, Welcome home, Innovators! I want to begin by putting this year’s Innovation Experience in some context, because we’ve witnessed three really historic moments these last several years that have forever changed VA health care.

First historic change—of course, the pandemic, an extraordinary public health emergency. And from the second it hit, you and your teams mobilized around one core mission—saving and improving the lives of Veterans, their caregivers, and survivors during a time of dire need. It should be lost on none of us that—because of you—there are Veterans at home with their families, right now, happy and healthy.

Second historic change—Post-9/11 Vets are out of 20 years of war … the most deployed force in our country’s history. So many have come home with both the visible and the invisible scars of battle and gripped by moral injury reintroduced by the chaotic fall of Kabul.

Third historic change—the largest expansion of Veteran health care and benefits in decades, that you all are helping implement—President Biden’s toxic exposure law the PACT Act. That law’s bringing millions of Vets to VA, many for the very first time, and we hope it will bring many Vets back to VA to give them another chance to be cared for, by you. They do better in your care. That’s a fact.

And through all of that, you’re delivering more care to more Veterans than at any other time in VA history. So, three huge changes, and one thing that will never change, that can never change—the Veteran-centric care you bring to Veterans. And when it comes to innovation, it’s Veteran-centric care paired with new innovations, innovative solutions for Vets that only come from putting ourselves in the shoes of the Veterans we serve. That’s the unique strength of VA health care—your tireless patient-centric care fueled by regular innovation.

All of which is to say, American Veterans are depending on the extraordinary ingenuity and innovative spirit you bring to the table. They’re putting their trust in your hands. So we need you thinking big, about that, about Veteran-centric care so we can do even better ensuring Vets have timely access to the highest quality, evidence-based care in the country.

Now, before things get moving too quickly, I do want us to pause a few moments, really ground our thoughts and our work in one thing. Veterans. Veterans, their families, caregivers, and survivors, and your deep devotion to caring for them, to serving them as well as they have served all of us.

Veterans Day is right around the corner, and I can think of no better time to come together like this, here in the nation’s capital, and be inspired, be inspired by reflecting deeply on what Veterans mean to each of us, so many of you Veterans yourselves, and by celebrating your great compassion. Because compassion for our Veterans has to be at the heart of, has to be the very foundation of the only kind of innovation that matters to us at VA. That’s innovation that makes Veterans’ lives better. That is the only reason we’re here—to fight like hell for Veterans, for all Veterans.

Here’s what that fight looks like. You know that women comprise our fastest growing cohort of Veterans. And we’re committed to providing women Vets the full range of health services they need for their health and well-being—gender-specific care, contraception, fertility services, reproductive health, family building, and more. We still have a lot of work to do. And Melissa Tran down at Orlando VA Medical Center—one of Medical Center Director Tim Cooke’s teammates—is leading us.

Here’s what I mean. Melissa’s one of VA’s great mental health care professionals. But it was her own very personal lived experiences that sparked her innovative spirit.

You see, when Melissa decided to be a mom, she had her own challenges—with infertility, with pregnancy. And her post-partum experience was difficult—struggles with doubt, feelings of failure, depression, anxiety. She learned first-hand how critical it is to have the right support. And she learned how damn hard it is to get support for maternal health care when resources are scattered across communities.

So, it was tough for Melissa, and she knew it was no easier for Vets. She decided to change that. She asked herself, Can VA do better by our women Vets when it comes to reproductive care? Can we give them in-house wraparound maternal health care services? Can we give them interdisciplinary care provided by VA teams specializing in perinatal care? Melissa’s answer, Yes. We owe it to them. And she got to work, determined to meet women Vets where their needs are with a customized, intensive, and individualized care plan. And that’s PREPARe—Peri-natal Reproductive  Education, Planning, and Resources. PREPARe.

PREPARe’s designed to give Vet families the support they need to navigate life experiences like infertility and loss, like pregnancy, and post-partum health and wellness. And PREPARe’s designed to minimize adverse social determinants of care and health care disparities among Veterans by emphasizing inclusiveness—that means minority communities, LGBTQ+ parents, parents who adopt, parents with disabilities, all Veterans and their families.

What kind of difference is PREPARe making in Veterans’ lives? It’s changing their lives, for the better. One example—Frieda Martin, an Army Vet, and an incredibly good, incredibly strong human being. Truly inspirational. Now, while many Veterans cherish fond memories of camaraderie from their service, Frieda’s Army experience was shrouded in darkness—three miscarriages while deployed to Germany, and the brutal experience of Military Sexual Trauma that cut her time in service short.

Still, when our country went to war after 9/11, Frieda, now a Veteran, was determined to serve. And serve she did—deployed for over a decade to where the fighting was, as a contracted logistician and transportation specialist. She deployed to Kuwait, to Iraq, to Afghanistan, and then on to Djibouti. When she came back to the States, Frieda decided to try again to be a mom. And she knew she needed some help. Thankfully, Frieda found Melissa and PREPARe, because with all the pain and trauma she’d experienced, she needed exactly the kind of support PREPARe offers Vets.

And she embraced every service PREPARe offered that would help—that’s pre- and post-partum nutrition classes, lactation classes, yoga, hypnosis, meditation, mental health support for post-partum depression, whatever Melissa could throw at her, Frieda tackled it. Because she’s a fighter. Because she wanted to recover from the pain of Military Sexual Trauma. Because she wanted a healthy baby. Because she wanted to be the best mom she could be.

And guess what? She made it. Her little girl, Frieda Jr., is one year old now. And Frieda’s going to give Frieda Jr. a baby brother or sister sometime soon.  Here’s what she’ll tell you about Melissa’s innovation, PREPARe. “It changed my life,” she said. “It made me a better person. It made me a better mom.” She said that PREPARe has empowered her “to deal with life, and I’m dealing with it.”

Today, Frieda is powerful. She graduated college. She runs her own insurance company. She’s living life on her own terms, she says. And she’s helping her fellow Veterans learn about all the benefits and services VA offers. Veterans helping Veterans, there’s nothing better than that. And that’s innovation at its very best.

And Melissa’s goal—get PREPARe embedded at every VA medical center, so all Veterans who want the service have access to it. Melissa taught other VA employees and Veterans about PREPARe at VA’s first ever Maternal Health Summit this past July. And so far, over 40 VA hospitals have consulted PREPARe to learn how to expand VA’s perinatal services at our medical centers across the country. And you know what, every Veteran deserves that kind of support, that kind of access. Talk about changing Veterans lives for the better. Tim, please tell Melissa how grateful we are for her work, for her vision, her compassion, and her innovation.

That’s just one great example of what Veteran-centric innovation in our fight for Veterans looks like. Veteran-centric innovation is about Veterans finding peace and tranquility they haven’t experienced for far too long, or finding relief from chronic pain and post-traumatic stress challenges thanks to innovative ways of using Virtual Reality and Immersive Technology. Veteran-centric innovation is Veterans making it to health care appointments more reliably, and more easily thanks to innovations like Dr. Indra Sandal and Ben William’s VHA Uber Health Connect. As one Vet said, without it “I wouldn’t be able to get to my appointments. It’s wonderful. I’m so blessed.”

It’s Veterans comforted by calls they get from the Compassionate Contact Corps Lori Murphy launched during the pandemic—volunteers reaching out to Vets at risk of loneliness, spending time with them, building lasting and fulfilling friendships. As one Vet said, “People aren’t meant to be all alone. These calls have been a dream come true.”

It’s innovation that puts health care device manufacturing right at the point of Veterans’ care.

Remember the groundbreaking GioStent we featured back in 2021? That was VA’s first-ever FDA cleared 3D-printed medical device for compassionate use that innovators down at the Charleston VA produced, hand-in-hand with the Veteran they were caring for. Well, that GioStent paved the way for more 3D projects tailored to meet Vets’ individual needs. It’s thanks to that kind of innovative spirit that we can say, At VA, if we can’t buy it, we’ll make it.

And Veteran-centric innovation is what our MISSION DAYBREAK grantees are after to help end Veteran suicide. I’m thinking about Battle Buddy innovators out at the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies. They’re working with SoldierStrong to see if interactive AI can help assess a Vet’s potential for suicidal ideation, prevent a suicidal crisis, and connect Vets to the mental health interventions they need in the moment. I’m thinking about Televeda’s Hero’s Story Project, a mental health application that uses traditional healing practices like storytelling and talking-circle interventions to bring balance, beauty, and harmony to Native American and Alaskan Native Vets struggling with depression and suicidal ideation.

Listen, I could go on and on. You’re doing so much. And you’ll see some great examples these next few days. But let’s not forget—at the end of the day, we’re back to the very heart of the matter, to the only question that matters. Does what we’re doing—individually and as a collective group—make Veterans’ lives better? A national review of more than 40 peer-reviewed studies shows that VA care is consistently as good as—or better than—non-VA health care. That, folks, is a result of your hard work, Veteran-centric work, and the Veteran-centric work of your colleagues back home.

And we offer the best health care for Vets because we keep the Veteran-centric innovations coming. But we can never rest on our laurels. When it comes to meaningful, Veteran-centric innovations, we must keep trying. And, inevitably, trying means failing.

Trying, failing, and learning. That’s the hard road to meaningful, Vet-centric innovation. Let me ask, how many people here have failed trying to find the right answer to a tough problem? Show of hands. Yeah. Exactly. It’s a big club.

Now, there are rare cases when we get it exactly right, the very first time. But more often, genuine success that’s addressing the most difficult problems, that’s answering the most urgent needs is the product of failure after failure after failure. And because we’re in the business of serving Veterans, because we’re fighting like hell for them, if we do fail, we never, ever give up.

One of this country’s greatest innovators and public servants Thomas Edison taught us that “our weakness lies in giving up.” He said, “The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” It isn’t magic. It isn’t genius. Hell, it’s not even miraculous. It’s much more fundamental than that. It’s believing in yourself, and in each other, and then leaning on one another when you’re stuck.

It’s the spirit of High Reliability Organizations—people empowered by leaders to be problem solvers, a shared commitment to resilience, to bouncing back from mistakes, to learning, adjusting, and getting back on track. And it’s a tight, tight grip on that most powerful and beautiful vision we can have—making life better for the very best people this country has to offer, our Veterans, not just helping them survive, but giving them the opportunity and the drive to thrive, once again. 

That’s what you’re about. That’s what we’re about here this week. And while innovation is critically important, there’s no replacing your core expertise—your human touch with our Veterans. So, think about how we can impact the care of many, many Veterans—without losing that personal impact you make on every Vet.

Remember, I said at the outset that Veterans have put their trust … put their very lives in your hands. I have no doubt that in your hands that trust is well placed.

May God bless all of you, our Veterans, their families, caregivers, and survivors. And may we always give them our very best. Have a great innovation experience!