Women's Health Research

Women are entering the military in record numbers—they currently comprise 20% of new recruits, and it's estimated that by 2018, 10% of the Veteran population will consist of women Veterans. To support the healthcare needs associated with both current and future women Veterans, the Veterans Health Administration supports a comprehensive women's health research agenda, which includes significant contributions from VA's Health Services Research & Development Service (HSR&D). HSR&D has overseen development of VA-wide and HSR&D-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, you will find links to the published agendas, VA Women's Health Research Network (WHRN), research highlights in key topical areas, and additional resources.

VA Women's Health Research Agenda

• Toward a VA Women's Health Research Agenda: Setting Evidence-based Priorities to Improve the Health and Health Care of Women Veterans - 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.
• Using Research to Transform Care for Women Veterans: Advancing the Research Agenda and Enhancing Research—Clinical Partnerships - 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, which was developed as part of research-clinical partnerships to use research to transform care for women Veterans.
• Integration of Women Veterans into VA Quality Improvement Research Efforts: What Researchers Need to Know - 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.

Women Veterans' Research Highlights

• Women Veterans' Suicide Prevention Research (2020)
• 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? (2022)
• 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)

VA Women's Health Research Systematic Reviews

• The State of Women Veterans' Health Research - This paper describes the results of the first-ever systematic review of the published literature on women Veterans' health research, finding that most research was descriptive in nature, and concerned PTSD, sexual harassment and assault, the utilization and organization of care, and various psychiatric conditions, while experimental studies and studies of quality of care were rare.
• Systematic review of women veterans' health: update on successes and gaps - 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 2004-2008 and found that more research had been published in the past 5 years than the previous 25 years combined.
• Systematic review of women veterans' mental health - This systematic review focused on women Veterans' mental health research published from 2008-2011, 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.

VA Women's Health Research Network (WHRN)

In addition to the comprehensive research agenda established by VHA and the many, specific HSR&D investigations, HSR&D has also funded the Women's Health Research Network, composed of two partnered components, the Women's Health Research Consortium (WHRC) and the Women's Health Practice Based Research Network (PBRN). The Network 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.

Resources

• Women's Health Literature Database
• VA HSR&D Women's Health Portfolio
• Women's Health Initiative Newsletter 2015-16(product of the Women's Health Initiative)
• Medical Care Supplement: Women Veterans' Health and Health Care, April 2015
• Women's Health Issues honors Veterans Day with special collection on women Veterans' health
• Women Veterans' Health and Health Care Supplement. Journal of General Internal Medicine July 2013
• Women Veterans Health Care: Research Publications and Reports
  
• Women's Health Issues (Special Collection on Women Veterans' Health)
• Join the VA Women's Health Research e-mail group.

Learn More

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