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FORUM - Translating research into quality health care for Veterans


In This Issue

Director's Letter

Director's Letter
by Seth A. Eisen, M.D., M.Sc.

Veterans choose VA as their primary source of health care largely because it provides high quality, comprehensive, integrated care at relatively little or no cost. Access to health care, however, can be a vexing issue for Veterans...

Commentary

The Health Needs of Rural Veterans
by Mary Beth Skupien, Ph.D., M.S., R.N., Director, Office of Rural Health, Washington, D.C.

Of the 23 million Veterans in this country, roughly 8 million are enrolled in the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), and approximately 40 percent of these Veterans live in rural and highly rural areas. Rural Veterans face unique health care challenges for a variety of reasons, including disparate access to higher quality services...

Response to Commentary

Improving Access and Quality of Care for Rural Veterans -- An Imperative
by Peter J. Kaboli, M.D., M.S., Director, Veterans Rural Health Resource Center Central Region, Iowa City VAMC

Understanding and addressing the needs of rural Veterans requires complementary perspectives including VA Central Office and local administration, policymakers, clinicians, researchers...

Research Highlights

Health Care Access and Quality for Rural Veterans
by Alan West, Ph.D., Deputy Director, Veterans Rural Health Resource Center Eastern Region, White River Junction VA Medical Center, VT

Fully understanding Veterans' access to health care requires much more nuance than utilization alone can reveal. Nevertheless, utilization sheds light on major aspects, such as the availability of financial resources to pay for services and the burden of traveling...


Access to VA Health Care in the Digital Age
by John Fortney, Ph.D., Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System, North Little Rock, Arkansas

As the paradigm of VHA health care delivery evolves, it is imperative that our conceptualization of access undergoes a concurrent paradigm shift to make it more relevant for the digital age. For the digital age, access to care should be redefined more broadly...


Telehealth Technologies for the Delivery of Mental Health Services
by Daniel F. Gros, Ph.D., Ron Acierno, Ph.D., Kenneth J. Ruggiero, Ph.D., Anouk L. Grubaugh, Ph.D., and Leonard E. Egede, M.D., M.S., all with the Ralph H. Johnson VA Medical Center and the Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina, and B. Christopher Frueh, Ph.D., University of Hawai'i at Hilo, Hilo, Hawaii

Telehealth services can overcome many of the current obstacles to quality mental health care in rural settings, including lack of local providers, transportation barriers...


Organizational Profile

VA's New Women's Health Research Consortium
by Seth Eisen, M.D., M.Sc., HSR&D Director and Linda Lipson, M.A., Scientific Program Manager, both from HSR&D Central Office, Washington, D.C.

In response to the demand for research to inform evidence-based approaches to improving access to high quality care for women Veterans, the VA HSR&D Service has funded a new VA Women's Health Research Consortium...



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