One of the special features of Iowa that I have always appreciated is the close relationship University of Iowa Health Care and our department have with the Iowa City Veterans Affairs Health System. Many of our faculty members have roles in large and small ways across the street or at outlying clinics. We deliver care to Veterans, conduct cutting-edge research funded by the VA, and educate trainees in a unique setting. What happens at the VA is as critical as what happens at UI Health Care when it comes to caring for Iowans and improving medicine. This week, I want to highlight and celebrate as much of our Internal Medicine faculty’s effort at the VA as this space will allow. Although the number of patients they treat, the research grants they win, and the residents and fellows they educate could never be entirely reflected, the work is just as challenging, just as important, and just as deeply valued. I want to make sure that our colleagues doing extraordinary work there every day know that we do see you, and we know that you demonstrate the same level of passion and commitment as your peers at Iowa.
In addition to their main campus, with its 83-bed hospital, multiple clinics and research facilities, all located nearby our university campus, the ICVA system comprises another 10 clinics across 50 counties in Iowa, Illinois, and Missouri. In 2025, the ICVA served 55,152 Veterans in total. That included 643,000 outpatient appointments, of which nearly 160,000 were primary care visits, 54,000 community care appointments, and more than 74,700 telehealth visits. In fact, under a program begun by our Hospital Medicine Interim Division Director Dr. Jeydith Gutierrez, telehospitalist medicine from ICVA hospitalists is now available to 10 rural VA medical centers across the country. That service has just been renewed for another three years with a grant of $10.5 million.
Beyond this region, though, the ICVA also connects to the larger US Department of Veterans Affairs syste
We could talk about VA projects in HSR&D alone for months and still not run out of things to say. For more than two decades now, the VA has supported a Center for Innovation in Iowa City called CADRE, the Center for Access & Delivery Research and Evaluation. Their operating budget in FY26 is $10.6M with about 40 centers, programs, and projects supported through a variety of sources, from Merit Awards to other centers organized by the VA. With 25 Core and Affiliate investigators, CADRE has a long and well-documented history of helping researchers build careers from career development awards all the way through drafting—and winning—Merit Awards. One way they do this is through the OAA Health Services Research Fellowship Program, just about to finish its fifth year since it was first launched by Drs. Michelle Mengeling and Michael Ohl in 2021. This program is now led by Drs. Bharat Kumar and Kimberly Dukes.
At a time when other sources of federal funding have been curtailed, delayed, or outright canceled, the flourishing of research at the VA is more than heartening. The VA’s Office of Rural Health, which is now led by our own Dr. Peter Kaboli, has also established a Veterans Rural Health Resource Center here (VRHRC-IC). Led by General Internal Medicine’s Dr. Samantha Solimeo and Psychiatry’s Dr. Carolyn Turvey, this center has an operating budget this year of $13.2 million to support projects aimed at improving quality and access to care for Veterans around the country. They also support two training and development programs, the Rural Scholars Fellowship and the ORH Career Development Program. Those programs are led by Drs. Melissa Swee and M. Bryant Howren. “Graduates” of these programs have gone on to successfully compete for Merit Awards and R03-equivalent awards, as well as independent VRHRC-IC awards. Just in the Division of General Internal Medicine, nearly $3.7M in grants are funding nine different projects. Dr. Solimeo asked me to let readers know if they have questions about funding opportunities through the VRHRC-IC, that they are welcome to send her an email. Exciting!
All of this and I still need to shout-out the incredible work done with our trainees at the VA! Although all our residents rotate at the VA, half of our categorical residents (16.5 FTE) complete their 3-year longitudinal continuity of care clinics through the ICVA. The VA fully funds one of our Chief Residents, the Quality & Patient Safety Chief Dr. Maluki Radford (far right in this picture, also with Drs. Cameron Brownlee and Diana Jalal), and supports 1.5 FTE of our other four Chiefs. A similar number of fellows (15.75 FTE) in ten subspecialties are also supported in their care for Veterans. My thanks to Drs. Justin Smock and Lee Sanders for their supervision and guidance of this doubly important work.
My thanks to everyone–Drs. Jalal, Yorek, Solimeo, Smock, and Sanders, especially–for their response to data requests. I have barely scratched the surface here, but in the weeks and months to come we will work to tell more individual stories about projects and successes at the VA, so please keep those good news announcements coming our way.
