Foreword to Special Issue on Veterans Health and Well-Being- Collaborative Research Approaches: Toward Veteran Community Engagement (original) (raw)
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Foreword to the Second Volume of the Special Issue on Veteran Community Engagement
Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 2023
Veteran community engagement is an evolving discipline informed by traditional community-based participatory research, veteran studies, and veterans themselves. This Special Issue suggests that research collaborations including military veterans, soldiers, and their families as co-researchers is a critical next step toward a design thinking perspective in social and healthcare systems for this population. This Special Issue was conceptualized through a veteran community-academic partnership formed over a decade ago. This partnership hosted several Warrior Summit conferences from 2013 to present, with the last of this series calling for academic contributions. The resulting papers drawn from the conference and other authors form this issue, and include a wide range of topics: veteran microdosing and psychedelic self-medication; a historical view of the impact of education exchange between U.S. and South Korean military nurses; strategies for engaging veterans in research of a theaterbased intervention for PTSD; interprofessional approaches to addressing veteran identity considerations through collaborations between chaplain service and psychologists in the VA Healthcare System; an international perspective
Challenging Veteran Stigma Through Collaborative Research-based Theater
2020
Military veterans are stereotyped in the media as either broken human beings or invincible heroes, often creating implicit bias and affecting medical providers' ability to establish trusting relationships. Interactive learning methods can challenge stigma and create empathic connections with veterans in a manner that conveys sensitivity. Community-engaged theater has been successfully used in health education to transfer knowledge on both emotional and cognitive levels. This article reports on a research-based theater intervention, Tracings of Trauma, codesigned by veterans and aimed at orienting medical/allied health students to the unique experiences of combat veterans. Early stage assessment demonstrated statistically significant improvement in students' self-perceived awareness of stigma and their ability to talk to veterans and empathize with veterans' experiences. Results suggest that interactive, performance-driven dissemination can provide deeper learning experiences regarding stigmatized groups who experience trauma. Evaluating long-term impact on practice will be critical in linking this intervention to clinical outcomes.
Veteran Engagement in Health Services Research: a Conceptual Model
Journal of General Internal Medicine
With 20 million living veterans and millions more immediate family members, and approximately 9 million veterans enrolled in the nationally networked VA healthcare system, representing the interests and needs of veterans in this complex community is a substantial endeavor. Based on the importance of engaging Veterans in research, the VA Health Services Research and Development (HSR&D) Service convened a Working Group of VA researchers and Veterans to conduct a review of patient engagement models and develop recommendations for an approach to engage Veterans in health research that would incorporate their unique lived experiences and interests, and their perspectives on research priorities. The Working Group considered the specific context for Veteran engagement in research that includes other VA stakeholders from the operational and clinical leadership of the VA Health Administration (VHA). The resulting model identifies the range of potential stakeholders and three domains of relev...
Journal of Community Engagement and Scholarship, 2021
This special edition of the Journal of Community Engagement and Scholarship (JCES) is the result of a 2-year effort to identify, compile, and publish scholarly research about military-to-civilian transitions conducted by service members, veterans, and their families (SMVF). It gives these SMVF voices center stage by representing a lived experience that speaks a truth to the scientific literature that bears careful and thoughtful consideration. This special edition was inspired by the awareness that many of the programs, policies and processes intended to facilitate social readjustment, transition, and mental health intervention for the SMVF community are largely based upon clinical research. Yet this research has historically limited the participation of individuals with lived experience in SMVF social worlds. As a result, scholarly representations have left out the full nature and diversity of the veteran community and the voices of the oft forgotten military family. As the project...
Building Sustainable Models of Veteran-Engaged Health Services Research
Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 2019
Engaging veterans in research has gained momentum in the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) in recent years. Engagement ensures that health services research is more relevant and tailored to the unique needs of veteran populations. VHA research centers promote engagement through the development of veteran engagement groups (VEGs). Members engage with researchers in organized meetings to review research proposals or projects, and provide individual feedback to improve veteran-centricity. This article shares important lessons learned in implementing VEGs locally from the liaisons who serve as a bridge between researchers and the veterans involved in these groups. Five steps in the VEG formation process are discussed: (1) regulatory considerations (e.g., compliance issues, ethics); (2) recruitment of VEG members (e.g., group size, demographic characteristics); (3) structure and governance (e.g., meeting logistics, participation, and privacy/confidentiality); (4) orientation and train...