Supporting Employment and Resources for Veterans’ Economic Security (SERVES)

Goals | Impacts | Promising Practices

June 30, 2026

Economic security influences many aspects of health, affecting how and where individuals live, work, and eat, as well as their ability to access healthcare services. HSR’s Supporting Employment and Resources for Veterans’ Economic Security Consortium (SERVES CORE) strives to promote and optimize research and quality improvement projects that improve Veterans’ economic security.

To that end, the SERVES CORE is developing research infrastructure and building a community of researchers and clinicians nationwide dedicated to studying employment and economic security for Veterans to prevent negative downstream outcomes including homelessness, suicide, criminal justice involvement, and poor health. The SERVES CORE, led by James LePage, PhD; Brian Stevenson, PhD; and Jack Tsai, PhD, MSCP, addresses VA priority areas of housing, economic security, and homelessness.

SERVES CORE Primary Goals

1. Increase Veterans’ access to and VA’s adoption of evidence-based interventions for Veterans at risk of unemployment, homelessness, or economic insecurity.
• Optimize existing programs related to employment and financial security.
• Develop and identify innovative interventions designed to meet the economic security needs of Veteran subgroups (e.g., racial or ethnic minorities, Veterans who have been formerly incarcerated, Veterans experiencing homelessness, and Veterans living in rural areas).

2. Increase employment and economic security research, including the reciprocal effects of employment and medical and psychological conditions common in Veterans.
• Enhance the ability of investigators to conduct research and quality improvement initiatives related to employment.

3. Create a robust network of early and mid-career investigators whose work addresses aspects of Veterans’ financial health that align with the needs and priorities of the VA Central Office partners of SERVES.

SERVES CORE Partners

• VA Homeless Programs Office
• VHA Vocational Rehabilitation Services
• National Center for Homelessness Among Veterans
• Homeless Veterans Community Employment Services
• VA National Veterans Financial Resources Center
• Northeast Program Evaluation Center
• Veterans Benefits Administration
• VA Office of Suicide Prevention
• Office of Mental Health
• HSR’s Center for Health Optimization and Implementation Research (CHOIR)
• HSR’s New England Mental Illness Research Education Clinical Center (VISN 1 MIRECC)

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SERVES CORE Impacts

• Established a Veterans Economic Security Panel (VESP) made up of 10 Veterans from across the U.S. who have diverse experience with economic insecurity. The VESP meets every other month with researchers to offer Veterans’ perspectives on all aspects of research or evaluation projects. This helps ensure that research and operational projects are Veteran-focused. Reviewed projects have included employment programming, economic insecurity measurement, and links between suicide and economic conditions.
• Developed a framework for understanding and defining economic insecurity.
• Developed a set of primary vocational outcomes to help standardize employment studies.
• Funded an intramural grant focused on employment through a partnership with the National Center for Homelessness Among Veterans.
• Initiated a mentoring program for early career researchers and trainees. To date, five mentor/mentee relationships have been established. Two mentees have obtained early career development funding:
• Cristina Parsons, PhD, will lead “Evaluating Telehealth Vocational Rehabilitation to Improve Employment for Rural Veterans.”
• Amanda Falcon, PhD, will lead “Assessing the Effectiveness of Vocational Rehabilitation Services for Justice-Involved Veterans.”
• Reviewed Office of Research and Development (ORD) studies focused on aspects of economic security (e.g., employment, homelessness, food insecurity).
• Facilitate collaboration among investigators and connect researchers with operational leaders who are interested in enhancing Veterans’ employment and economic security.
• Developed and currently piloting a brief screening tool for assessing economic insecurity.
• Initiated program evaluation projects with operations and VISN partners.
• Worked with VHA Vocational Rehabilitation Services to conduct a survey of their Community Based Employment Services staff.
• Examined vocational staff experiences with virtual vocational care in VISN 23, a VA service network for Veterans in the Midwest.
• Worked with the National Center for Homelessness Among Veterans to examine the impact of relationships and homelessness in recently incarcerated Veterans.
• Collaborated with the National Center for Homelessness Among Veterans to review the impact of AI on Veteran employment opportunities.
• Provided subject matter expertise for congressionally mandated reviews and reports (e.g., a Dole Act review of suicide prevention programs in VA that target social determinants of health, a Cleland Dole Act report on financial and credit counseling of Veterans).
• Consulted with HSR’s VA Informatics and Computing Infrastructure (VINCI) to identify variables in VA’s Corporate Data Warehouse and other databases that are relevant to economic security.
• Created a repository of existing datasets related to employment.
• Increased awareness of the importance of economic security through presentations in VA and beyond.
• Through outreach efforts such as a monthly newsletter, SERVES has grown its national membership to more than 45 VA investigators/providers in just over a year.

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Key Findings from Recent Research

Members of the SERVES CORE publish papers that help advance employment security-related initiatives and improve outcomes for Veterans. Published papers include:

• Permanent supportive housing and cardiovascular outcomes among Veterans experiencing homelessness. This study found that among Veterans with chronic cardiovascular disease who were experiencing homelessness, obtaining services through a Department of Housing and Urban Development permanent supportive housing program was associated with a significant decrease in the probability of cardiovascular-related emergency department visits or hospitalizations. Journal of General Internal Medicine.
• Veterans’ experiences with transitioning from prison: an evaluation of goals and barriers to success after incarceration. In this study, researchers interviewed Veterans who were recently released from prison to assess their lived experiences, goals, and needs as they re-entered the community. Journal of Social Distress and Homelessness.
• Standardizing measurement of employment outcomes in vocational research. Studies vary widely in how they assess employment outcomes. This article recommends a package of objective measures that will provide guidance to researchers who are planning new studies, permit direct comparisons of studies, and facilitate meta-analytic reviews. Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal.
• Likelihood of recidivism and suicidality among justice-involved homeless Veterans with comorbid mental health and substance use disorders. This study found that among criminal legal system-involved homeless Veterans with comorbid mental health and substance use disorders, suicidality was associated with elevated criminogenic risk (the likelihood that the person will commit a crime) and greater psychiatric burden, particularly PTSD. BMC Public Health.

Promising Practices

• Expansion of virtual vocational services via telephone and video to better reach and serve Veterans.
• Development of standardized outcomes to evaluate vocational success. Identifying and sharing reliable and valid measures of vocational outcomes will encourage good research practices and enhance comparability among studies.
• Evaluation of adaptations to supported employment, with a tailored approach to enroll, engage, and benefit diverse Veterans.

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