Women's Health Research

Women are entering the military in record numbers—they currently comprise 20% of recruits, and it's estimated that by 2040, 18% of the Veteran population will consist of women Veterans. To support the healthcare needs of current and future women Veterans, the Veterans Health Administration supports a comprehensive women's health research agenda, including significant contributions from the VA's Health Systems Research (HSR). HSR has overseen the development of VA-wide and HSR-focused research agendas to advance scientific research that includes or focuses on women Veterans to better understand their health and healthcare needs and inform systematic improvements in their care. Below are links to the VA Women's Health Research Network (WHRN), research summaries/snapshots in key topical areas, published agendas, published systematic reviews, and additional resources.

VA Women's Health Research Network (WHRN)

In addition to the comprehensive research agenda established by VHA and the many specific HSR investigations, HSR has also funded the Women's Health Research Network (WHRN), composed of three partnered components: the Consortium, the Women's Health Practice-Based Research Network (WH-PBRN), and Multilevel Stakeholder Engagement. The WHRN enhances the conduct of VA women's health services research studies by building capacity, meeting field-based technical needs, and reducing barriers associated with conducting multi-site studies.

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)

VA Women's Health Research Agenda & Priority Papers

• Toward a VA Women's Health Research Agenda: Setting Evidence-based Priorities to Improve the Health and Health Care of Women Veterans (2006). Recognizing the changing demographics of Veterans and the special healthcare needs of women, the VA Office of Research & Development sponsored the first VA Women's Health Research Agenda-setting conference to map research priorities to the needs of women Veterans.
• Integration of Women Veterans into VA Quality Improvement Research Efforts: What Researchers Need to Know (2010). This paper describes women Veterans' health and healthcare use, notes how VA care is organized to meet their needs, reports early gender differences in quality, highlights national plans for women Veterans' quality improvement, and discusses how VA women's health research can contribute to systematic gains.
• Using Research to Transform Care for Women Veterans: Advancing the Research Agenda and Enhancing Research—Clinical Partnerships (2011). This paper provides the historical evolution of the emergence of women Veterans' health services research and an overview of the VA Women's Health Services Research Agenda, developed as part of research-clinical partnerships to use research to transform care for women Veterans.
• Substance Use Among Women Veterans: Epidemiology to Evidence-Based Treatment (2013). This article discusses evidence-based approaches for treating women Veterans' substance misuse in primary and specialty care settings, along with knowledge gaps and potential research priorities to improve care in this special population.
• Accelerating Research on Suicide Risk and Prevention in Women Veterans Through Research-Operations Partnerships (2021). This paper reports on the process and outcomes of the Women Veterans’ Suicide Prevention Research Work Group’s strategic planning efforts to identify and fill gaps in suicide prevention research among women veterans.
• Research Priorities to Support Women Veterans' Reproductive Health and Health Care Within a Learning Health Care System (2023). This article summarizes the research findings at the VA Reproductive Health Research Conference. It describes developing a set of research priorities for women veterans’ reproductive health and health care to advance a learning health care system approach to reproductive health care in the VA.

VA Women's Health Research Systematic Reviews

• The State of Women Veterans' Health Research: Results of a Systematic Literature Review (2006). This paper describes the results of the first-ever systematic review of the published literature on women Veterans' health research. It found that most research was descriptive in nature and concerned PTSD, sexual harassment and assault, the utilization and organization of care, and various psychiatric conditions. In contrast, experimental studies and studies of quality of care were rare.
• Systematic review of women veterans' health: Update on Successes and Gaps (2011). With growing attention to the needs of women Veterans in the early 2000s, a team updated the initial systematic review to add new scientific studies published between 2004 and 2008 and found that more research had been published in the past five years than in the previous 25 years combined.
• Systematic Review of Women Veterans' Mental Health (2014). This systematic review focused on women Veterans' mental health research published from 2008 to 2011 and noted the need for more interventional and longitudinal designs and understudied areas in certain psychiatric disorders (e.g., schizophrenia), the effects of deployment on women Veterans' families, and strategies to address treatment access, attrition, and provision of gender-sensitive care.
• Evidence Map: Reporting of Results by Sex or Gender in Randomized, Controlled Trials with Women Veteran Participants (2008 to 2018) (2019). This paper compares the characteristics of RCTs with women veteran participants that did or did not report results by sex or gender. Additionally, the authors assess how sex and gender are addressed in research with women veterans.
• Reproductive Health of Women Veterans: A Systematic Review of the Literature from 2008 to 2017 (2020). This article aims to synthesize recent literature on reproductive health and healthcare of women Veterans.

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)

Learn More

• VA ORD Women's Health
• VA Women Veterans Health Care Program
• VA Center for Women Veterans