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Public health
Cohort profile
The Veterans Metrics Initiative study of US veterans’ experiences during their transition from military service
  1. Dawne Vogt1,2,
  2. Daniel F Perkins3,4,5,
  3. Laurel A Copeland6,7,8,
  4. Erin P Finley9,10,
  5. Christopher S Jamieson11,
  6. Bradford Booth12,
  7. Suzanne Lederer13,
  8. Cynthia L Gilman11
  1. 1 Women’s Health Sciences Division, National Center for PTSD (116B-3), VA Boston Healthcare System, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
  2. 2 Department of Psychiatry, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
  3. 3 Clearinghouse for Military Family Readiness, Pennsylvania State University (PSU), State College, Pennsylvania, USA
  4. 4 Department of Agricultural Economics, Sociology, and Education, Pennsylvania State University, State College, Pennsylvania, USA
  5. 5 Social Science Research Institute, Pennsylvania State University, State College, Pennsylvania, USA
  6. 6 VA Central Western Massachusetts Healthcare System, Leeds, Massachusetts, USA
  7. 7 Center for Applied Health Research, Baylor Scott & White Health, Temple, Texas, USA
  8. 8 Department of Psychiatry, UT Health San Antonio, San Antonio, Texas, USA
  9. 9 Veterans Evidence-based Research Dissemination and Implementation Center, South Texas Veterans Health Care System, San Antonio, Texas, USA
  10. 10 Departments of Medicine and Psychiatry, UT Health San Antonio, San Antonio, Texas, USA
  11. 11 The Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine, Inc, Bethesda, Maryland, USA
  12. 12 Westat Inc, Rockville, Maryland, USA
  13. 13 ICF International Inc, Fairfax, Virginia, USA
  1. Correspondence to Dr Dawne Vogt; dawne.vogt{at}va.gov

Abstract

Purpose Efforts to promote the health and well-being of military veterans have been criticised for being inadequately informed of veterans’ most pressing needs as they separate from military service, as well as the programmes that are most likely to meet these needs. The current article summarises limitations of the current literature and introduces The Veterans Metrics Initiative (TVMI) study, a longitudinal assessment of US veterans’ well-being and programme use in the first three years after they separate from military service. Veterans were assessed within 3 months of military separation and will complete five additional assessments at 6-month intervals during the subsequent period.

Participants The TVMI study cohort consists of a national sample of 9566 newly separated US veterans that were recruited in the fall of 2016.

Findings to date The TVMI sample includes representation from all branches of service, men and women, and officers and enlisted personnel. Although representative of the larger population on many characteristics, differential response rates were observed for some subgroups, necessitating the development of non-response bias weights. Comparisons between unweighed and weighted results suggest that the weighting procedure adequately adjusts for observed differences.

Future plans Analyses are under way to examine veterans’ well-being and programme use in the period following separation after military service, as well as factors associated with poor outcomes. We have also begun to decompose programmes into their core components to facilitate examination of how these components relate to well-being. Once our third data collection is complete, we will examine factors related to different patterns of readjustment over time.

  • mental health
  • preventive medicine
  • public health
  • rehabilitation medicine

This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2017-020734

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    Footnotes

    • Contributors DV, DFP, LAC, EPF, CSJ, BB, SL, and CLG all contributed to the design of the study. DV led the preparation of this manuscript. All other authors reviewed drafts and contributed to the writing.

    • Funding This research was managed by the Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine, Inc. (HJF); and collaboratively sponsored by the Bob Woodruff Foundation, Health Net Federal Services, The Heinz Endowments, HJF, Lockheed Martin Corporation, May and Stanley Smith Charitable Trust, National Endowment for the Humanities, Northrop Grumman, Philip and Marge Odeen, Prudential, Robert R. McCormick Foundation, Rumsfeld Foundation, Schultz Family Foundation, Walmart Foundation, Wounded Warrior Project, Inc., and the Veterans Health Administration Health Services Research and Development Service.

    • Disclaimer The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and not an official position of any institution or funder.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Patient consent Obtained.

    • Ethics approval VA Boston Healthcare System; ICF International.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Data sharing statement Twelve months following completion of the study, deidentified data will be made available to the broader community of veteran researchers to support secondary analyses of research questions related to veterans’ well-being and programme use throughout the military-to-civilian transition. Information on the availability of this data set will be provided on the Henry M. Jackson Foundation website.