Voices of VA Research Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Challenges in tapering long-term opioid use Apr 23, 2018

Show notes

Erica Sprey of VA Research Communications speaks with Dr. Joseph Frank, a primary care physician at the VA Eastern Colorado Health Care System in Denver. He is also a researcher at the Center of Innovation for Veteran-Centered and Value-Driven Care. Dr. Frank's research is focused on improving care for Veterans who are living with chronic pain—especially strategies for safely tapering the use of long-term opioid medication. For Veterans who are taking opioids long term, says Frank, the process of stopping or reducing those medications can be very challenging. His research aims to discover how to deliver high-quality pain care during and after opioid tapering.
Read more: Helping Veterans safely stop long-term opioid use

Researcher examines if religion can cure feelings of guilt in Veterans with PTSD Apr 03, 2018

Show notes

Mike Richman of VA Research Communications interviews Dr. Harold Koenig, head of the Center for Spirituality, Theology, and Health at Duke University in North Carolina. Koenig is one of the top proponents in the research community for using religion as a therapy for Veterans with PTSD. He's aligning this approach with former service members who are victims of moral injury, which is essentially a conflict with one's personal code of morality. Koenig discusses his extensive work on moral injury, which is gaining recognition in VA.
Read more: Man on a mission

Understanding intimate partner violence in women Veterans Mar 14, 2018

Show notes

Erica Sprey of VA Research Communications speaks with Dr. Katherine Iverson, a clinical psychologist and researcher at the Women's Health Division of the National Center for PTSD at the VA Boston Healthcare System. Dr. Iverson's research is focused on identifying and understanding intimate partner violence, or IPV, in women Veterans. She is also working together with other VA investigators to bring light to the problem of traumatic brain injury that stems from IPV. Women are often punched in the face during a violent encounter with an intimate partner and may not understand their risk for a brain injury.
Read more: How intimate partner violence affects women Veterans

VA, CDC collaborate to fight infectious diseases Feb 27, 2018

Show notes

Mike Richman of VA Research Communications interviews Dr. Heather Reisinger, an infectious disease specialist at the Iowa City VA Health Care System. She and her colleague, Eli Perencevich, are leading VA’s efforts in a partnership with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC, to ramp up the fight against infectious diseases. The highlight of the partnership is a research network that will identify ways to better protect patients and employees from infectious diseases in medical settings. Dangerous pathogens, such as bacteria, fungi, viruses, and parasites, can cause infectious diseases.
Read more: Joining forces

Reaching Veterans with chronic pain Feb 02, 2018

Show notes

Erica Sprey of VA Research Communications speaks with Dr. Steve Martino and Dr. Marc Rosen, both substance use researchers at VA Connecticut Healthcare System in New Haven. They are coinvestigators for a study that uses the VA compensation exam to reach out to Veterans who are applying for a service-connected disability for chronic pain. Their aim is to connect with Veterans who are suffering from pain and introduce them to the array of services available through VA.

Million Veteran Program Jan 09, 2018

Show notes

Listen as Larry Whitler and Robin McBlane, hosts of the radio show AM Ocala on WOCA-AM in Florida, talk with Dr. Sumitra Muralidhar, program director for VA's Million Veteran Program (MVP). The interview took place in August 2016. MVP is building one of the world's largest databases of health and genomic information. Studies using MVP data, many of them already underway, will seek answers to improve health care for Veterans and others. The program has enrolled close to 625,000 Veterans as of mid-December 2017.

Mental health care for Veterans with life-limiting illnesses Nov 30, 2017

Show notes

Erica Sprey of VA Research Communications speaks with Dr. Melissa Garrido, who is a health services researcher with the Geriatric Research Education and Clinical Center at the James J. Peters VA Medical Center in the Bronx, New York. Her research is focused on examining the quality of mental health care provided to Veterans with serious physical illnesses, such as advanced cancer. She hopes to better understand the need for mental health care in a palliative care setting, and if provided, the effects on health care utilization and cost.
Read more: The impact of mental illness on palliative care outcomes for seriously ill Veterans

VA researcher leads landmark study on prostate cancer Oct 24, 2017

Show notes

Mike Richman of VA Research Communications interviews Dr. Timothy Wilt, a physician-researcher at the Minneapolis VA Health Care System, about his 20-year landmark study on prostate cancer, the second-leading cause of cancer deaths among men. The study focuses on the best way to treat early stage prostate cancer, whether it's surgical removal of the prostate–the first choice of many patients–or observation, which involves monitoring using the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) blood test, and delayed surgery to reduce possible symptoms. The trial finds that surgery does not significantly reduce all-cause or prostate cancer deaths for men in the early stages of the disease.
Read more: Prostate Cancer: Study Finds No Statistical Difference Between Surgery, Observation in Reducing Deaths

Comparing psychotherapies for PTSD Aug 30, 2017

Show notes

Mitch Mirkin of VA Research Communications talks with Dr. Paula Schnurr, director of VA's National Center for PTSD, about a major clinical trial now underway in VA called "Comparative Effectiveness Research in Veterans with PTSD (CERV-PTSD)." The trial is a head-to-head comparison of the two main psychotherapies VA uses to treat PTSD. The trial, sponsored by VA's Cooperative Studies Program, will involve 900 Veterans at nearly 20 VA sites.
Read More: "Probing psychotherapies for PTSD"

Severely limiting opioid prescriptions may harm pain patients Aug 29, 2017

Show notes

Erica Sprey of VA Research Communications speaks with Dr. Stefan Kertesz, an internal medicine physician who works primarily with Veterans experiencing homelessness and substance use disorder. He runs the patient-aligned care team for homelessness at the Birmingham VA Medical Center in Alabama, and serves on its opioid safety initiative committee. In addition to conducting research on interventions for homelessness and substance use disorder, Kertesz has written extensively on the problem of opioid addiction and the movement to severely restrict opioid prescriptions.
Read More: 'Will strict limits on opioid prescription duration prevent addiction?'

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