HOUSTON—For many veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan deployments, psychologist Ashley Clinton, PhD, is the first mental health professional they see and their entry-point to VA mental health care.

WASHINGTON—VA’s 10-year capital construction plan calls for an investment of $53 billion to $65 billion over that timeframe; however, this year the agency is asking for only $2.8 billion.

JEREMY M. BERG, PHD, DIRECTOR OF THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF GENERAL MEDICAL SCIENCES (NIGMS), is a recipient of the 2011 Public Service Award from the American Chemical Society (ACS). The annual award recognizes outstanding contributions to public service or to the development of public policy that benefits the chemical sciences.

BETHESDA, MD—Five years ago, NIH started promoting a paradigm of medicine—one that was predictive, personalized, preemptive and always with the participation of the patient. That paradigm began with the ability to predict who was at risk for certain diseases, including cardiovascular disease.

WASHINGTON—Recent months have seen a reinvigorated commitment to research targeted at curbing the obesity epidemic in the United States, including a number of completed studies from VA and DoD and the release of a new strategic plan from NIH.

WASHINGTON—The Senate Committee on Indian Affairs released an investigative report last year that found that an increasingly high number of Equal Employment Opportunity complaints (EEO) had been filed in the Aberdeen Area, which is made up of IHS and tribally-managed units that serve about 100,000 Indians in North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Iowa.

WASHINGTON—A study published in the April issue of Health Affairs found that medical errors cost the United States more than $17 billion a year. And, according to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, medical errors and near miss events, i.e. any process or error that could have resulted in harm if it had not been caught, are responsible for injury to as many as one out of every 25 hospital patients.

WASHINGTON—Cancer organizations were pleased that funding was not reduced for the peer-reviewed prostate, breast and ovarian cancer programs in DoD’s Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program (CDMRP) in the FY 2011 Defense budget.

PITTSBURGH—In 2000, if you were a patient at the Pittsburgh VAMC and were found to have a lung nodule, it took an average of six weeks to be evaluated for lung cancer. With the possibility of being diagnosed with a life-threatening disease hanging over your head, those six weeks could seem like an eternity.