Veterans Health Administration
The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) is continually making great strides in advancing the field of behavioral medicine, and the Society of Behavioral Medicine has collaborated with the VHA in several activities described below.
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Brian Mittman, PhD, Director of the VHA Resource Center on Implementation Research, has accepted an invitation to provide a Master Lecture on Implementation Science at the 2011 annual meeting.
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Contact with the Veterans Health Administration Office of Health Services Research and Development (HSR&D) leadership has been made and the Directors and Scientific Portfolio Managers have been invited to attend the SBM 2011 annual meeting in Washington, DC.
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Special issue of Translational Behavioral Medicine: Practice, Policy, Research on VHA in development. Dr. Robert Kerns and Dr. Sara Knight are serving as co-editors of this issue. A preliminary list of invited contributions, draft of call for papers, and proposed outline are completed and under review.
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Dr. Knight and Dr. Kerns met with Dr. Linda Kinsinger and Dr. Ken Jones from the VHA Office of Patient Care Services regarding the hiring of behavioral medicine professionals for the MOVE program, a national intervention to increase physical activity among Veterans. The group discussed the potential for collaborative activities.
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Dr. Goodrich organized and wrote an article on the VA liaison for the fall issue of Outlook. This article focused on the MOVE program as an example of the implementation of behavioral medicine in VHA.
- Dr. Knight worked with Dr. Teresa Damush to encourage the submission of an annual meeting panel on implementation science efforts in VHA. The abstracts for this panel were submitted for review for the 2011 annual meeting. If accepted, this panel will provide an outstanding illustration of the implementation of evidence-based behavioral medicine interventions in the VHA to complement Dr. Mittman’s Master Lecture on implementation science.
