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. 2021 May 18;9(5):604.
doi: 10.3390/healthcare9050604.

Exploring Health Outcomes for U.S. Veterans Compared to Non-Veterans from 2003 to 2019

Jose A Betancourt  1 , Paula Stigler Granados  1 , Gerardo J Pacheco  1 , Julie Reagan  1 , Ramalingam Shanmugam  1 , Joseph B Topinka  1 , Bradley M Beauvais  1 , Zo H Ramamonjiarivelo  1 , Lawrence V Fulton  1
Affiliations

Exploring Health Outcomes for U.S. Veterans Compared to Non-Veterans from 2003 to 2019

Jose A Betancourt et al. Healthcare (Basel). .

Abstract

The physical demands on U.S. service members have increased significantly over the past several decades as the number of military operations requiring overseas deployment have expanded in frequency, duration, and intensity. These elevated demands from military operations placed upon a small subset of the population may be resulting in a group of individuals more at-risk for a variety of debilitating health conditions. To better understand how the U.S Veterans health outcomes compared to non-Veterans, this study utilized the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) dataset to examine 10 different self-reported morbidities. Yearly age-adjusted, population estimates from 2003 to 2019 were used for Veteran vs. non-Veteran. Complex weights were used to evaluate the panel series for each morbidity overweight/obesity, heart disease, stroke, skin cancer, cancer, COPD, arthritis, mental health, kidney disease, and diabetes. General linear models (GLM's) were created using 2019 data only to investigate any possible explanatory variables associated with these morbidities. The time series analysis showed that Veterans have disproportionately higher self-reported rates of each morbidity with the exception of mental health issues and heart disease. The GLM showed that when taking into account all the variables, Veterans disproportionately self-reported a higher amount of every morbidity with the exception of mental health. These data present an overall poor state of the health of the average U.S. Veteran. Our study findings suggest that when taken as a whole, these morbidities among Veterans could prompt the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) to help develop more effective health interventions aimed at improving the overall health of the Veterans.

Keywords: U.S. Veteran; comorbidities; deployment; diabetes; obesity; overweight; risk-factors; spatial regression.

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Conflict of interest statement

All authors declare they have no conflicts of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Total Personnel levels for U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) military personnel from 1950 through present (US Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC)).
Figure 2
Figure 2
U.S. Periods of war and dates of recent conflicts from 1940 through present.
Figure 3
Figure 3
U.S. military operations from 1980 through present.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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