From our very first days as a nation, the United States recognized a responsibility to its Veterans. After our first soldiers did the heavy lifting when it came to earning our independence from monarchy, the US War Department established a small office to pay service members a pension. Over the decades, that office expanded, usually not long after American conflicts, adhering to the simple principle that anyone who was willing to risk their life has earned our nation’s unending gratitude and material support. Guaranteed health care and homes for Veterans with disabilities followed the Civil War and access to higher education and housing assistance for many (and eventually all) came after the Second World War.
Today, nationwide, nearly 9 million Veterans receive health care through the Veterans Health Administration and about 100,000 of them live in Iowa. About a quarter of all US Veterans live in rural and “highly rural” areas, towns with populations below 2,500. In Iowa this is true of about 400 communities, where about one-third of our state’s 3 million residents live. So when we talk about improving access to health care for Iowans, we are also talking about improving access for the Veterans who live in about 50 counties across our half of the state and into Missouri and Illinois.
As Dr. Eli Perencevich noted in this essay earlier this year, the VA has been a leader in medical research for a century. And they have been innovating in health services research for much of that time, even maintaining an Office of Rural Health, currently directed by another one of our own, Dr. Peter Kaboli. Dr. Kaboli is only one of more than a hundred Internal Medicine faculty members who currently work just across the street at our Iowa City VA Health System. Many of them engage in some form of research there. Dr. Mark Yorek tells me that total research funding of our faculty at the VA is at $22.7 million, with about $13.6 million of that in direct VA funding in fiscal year 2024. This is an impressive amount of activity leading to real improvements for patients and clinicians.
Photo for reflection
I had the pleasure of attending a brief presentation in our Research Seminar Series from a former VA researcher earlier this week. Dr. Heather Reisinger now directs the University of Iowa’s Implementation Science Center, but spent many years before that working alongside other members of CADRE, the VA-funded Center for Innovation in Iowa City. On Tuesday, Dr. Reisinger described how she and her colleagues helped UI Health Care choose, deploy, and then track the adoption and satisfaction with Nabla, the transcription tool that aids in producing documentation. (I may have more to say on this tool and why I think it’s such a game-changer soon.) But as Dr. Reisinger was describing the increase in job satisfaction and reduction in burnout from Nabla users, I was also thinking about our relationship with the VA. Both sides of the street are stronger because of our department. Like the wing of this plane helping keep its passengers above the clouds, our department’s commitment to fulfilling the nation’s promise keeps not only today’s Veterans healthy but tomorrow’s as well.
Upi’s “Oh, WOW” moment
