Overview

The VA Pacific Islands Health Care System (VAPIHCS) recognizes the importance of research to enhance the quality of healthcare to veterans.  It supports an active research and development program.  Studies are being conducted on post traumatic stress and psychological trauma, aging and dementia, stress, coronary artery disease and Parkinson’s disease.  A  VA Pacific Islands Health Care System/Tripler Army Medical Center collaborative project was funded by the Office of Naval Research to examine the efficacy of virtual reality for treating post traumatic stress disorder in U.S. Warfighters returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Other areas of research include genetic predictors of early onset coronary artery disease, women’s deployment stress, the role of Lewy bodies in neurodegeneration, telehealth therapy in the treatment of anger management and PTSD, psychiatric side effects associated with Hepatitis C, service utilization preferences among GWOT veterans in the Pacific, sexual dysfunction associated with severe PTSD and environmental factors in the etiology of parkinsonism among Alaska native people. 

In FY 2007, VAPIHCS received approximately $247,313 in VA research funding.  Additionally, VAPIHCS has received and/or supported research funded by other sources such as the National Institute of Health, Department of Defense, National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression, and various pharmaceutical sponsors.  These external funds amounted to $2,527,218 in FY 2007.  The VAPIHCS and Tripler Army Medical Center have been involved in a VA-Department of Defense collaborative partnership that focuses on telehealth, clinical informatics research and emerging technological initiatives.  On October 10-11, 2006, the VAPIHCS underwent a reaccreditation survey of its Human Research Protection Program by the Association for the Accreditation of Human Research Protection Programs (AAHRPP) and received full accreditation on June 15, 2007 which is valid until June 14, 2010. 

How to Contact Us?
The VAPIHCS is committed to assuring that each of its research activities involving human participants is conducted in a way that promotes the rights and welfare of the participants. We encourage you to contact us if you have any comments and suggestions about our Human Research Protection Program.  Also, if you have any questions, concerns, or complaints about research or if you have a research related injury or if you have questions about the rights of research participants, we can be reached at (808) 433-7785 (Oahu). For those outside of Oahu, you may call 1-800-214-1306, press 1 and ask to be transferred to extension 7785.

Information will be kept confidential, if requested.

What is Research?
Frequently asked questions from investigators are whether their projects constitute human studies research and whether the projects require a protocol. Research is defined as a systematic investigation designed to develop and contribute to generalized knowledge. If the data are derived from human subjects and are intended for publication or public presentation, use of such data constitutes human use research and must be reviewed by the Institutional Review Board (IRB). Data use involving an investigational procedure, drug or device must be reviewed as well. A protocol application would be required by the IRB to review the intended research.
Another difficulty, especially for the clinician investigator, is to distinguish research from clinical practice. The differences lie in the purpose and goals of each. In clinical practice, the clinician is diagnosing, preventing, treating, or caring for an illness that occurs in patients. The goal is to meet the needs of patients with the general expectation that the individual patient will benefit from that treatment. Although a clinician practices medicine using different techniques to improve an individual’s state of health, manipulation of clinical practice in a systematic way to achieve a research end, without a protocol, should be avoided.

If routine, clinical data are to be collected through record review by the patient’s provider and used in an educational manner, such as a case report, a protocol is not required. However, for a case series where there will be multiple record reviews, a protocol may be necessary. Note, that if you intend to publish the case report or case series, it must be submitted to the VAPIHCS Research & Development Committee for administrative clearance.