Women's Health Research

Research on women Veterans' health has expanded in recent years in breadth and depth. Historically, the majority of research among women Veterans was focused on mental health conditions, chiefly in the areas of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and the consequences of military exposures, including military sexual trauma. Now, efforts to build a broader and more robust evidence base across the lifespan have yielded new research on primary care and prevention, reproductive health, access/rural health, and the care for complex chronic conditions and the long-term care needs of older women Veterans. Deployment and post-deployment health research is now a significant portion of the VA women's health research portfolio, extending knowledge into the health and healthcare needs of women returning from Operations Enduring Freedom, Iraqi Freedom and New Dawn (OEF/OIF/OND) as well as women still in active duty service. New initiatives to accelerate women Veterans' healthcare research and its impacts include the VA Women's Health Research Network, the Women Veterans' Healthcare CREATE, and the EMPOWER Quality Enhancement Research Initiative (QUERI). The longitudinal study of long-term health outcomes of women's services during the Vietnam Era has also been recently completed, with published findings starting to become available.

WHRN Research Summaries/Snapshots

• Women Veterans' Suicide Prevention Research (2024)
• Women Veterans' Intimate Partner Violence Research: Improving screening and treatment in VHA care (2023)
• Women Veterans' Experiences with Harassment at the VA: What do we know and what has been done? (2024)
• VA Pregnancy and Maternity Care Research (2023)
• Women Veterans' Prosthetics Research (2023)
• Rural Women Veterans' Healthcare Research: Reducing Access Disparities (2023)
• LGBTQ+ Veteran Research: Emerging Evidence for Reducing Health Disparities (2022)
• Cardiovascular Disease in Women Veterans: Reducing Sex Disparities in Risk and Prevention (2024)
• Women Veteran Menopause Research Snapshot (2024)

Resources

• JGIM Special Issue September 2022: Moving Women Veterans' Health Research Forward: A Special Supplement
• VA HSR Women's Health Portfolio
• VA Office of Women's Health: Research Publications and Reports
• Women’s Enhanced Recruitment Process Toolkit
  https://cipherwiki.va.gov/phenotype/index.php?title=WERP_Toolkit (internal VA website)
• NIH Inclusion Outreach Toolkit: How to Engage, Recruit, and Retain Women in Clinical Research
• VA LGBTQ+ Resources
  https://dvagov.sharepoint.com/sites/vhava-lgbt-resources (internal VA website)