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Dr. Priya Joshi, Chief Health Informatics Officer at the San Francisco VA Medical Center, has been honored with the prestigious 2024 AMSUS Physician Award. AMSUS, The Society of Federal Health Professionals, is a non-profit, member-based association providing education and professional development opportunities in support of federal health leaders, federal health professionals, and their respective missions within the Departments of Defense, Veterans Affairs, Health and Human Services, and Homeland Security. Dr. Joshi was one of six employees from across VA to be chosen for a 2024 AMSUS award.
Dr. Joshi served as a VHA Innovation Ecosystem Entrepreneur in Residence Fellow from 2021-2023 and was recently recognized for her exceptional contributions to advancing health care for Veterans.
Dr. Joshi’s approach involves understanding how an exclusion from code turns into an exclusion from care. She designed adaptive analytics that identified Veterans who did not know they had kidney disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes due to the way analytics were written. She then developed clinics to make sure those Veterans received care upstream. She applied these principles to identify Veterans experiencing food insecurity who may not volunteer their experience due to stigma, culture, and a lack of resources. Dr. Joshi went on to create a grocery delivery program called Foodshare that enhanced screening and provided 2,500 Veterans and 700 children with a total of 85,000 days (about 232 and a half years) of food during the pandemic.
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Now, she integrates equitable design frameworks while adapting artificial intelligence at the point of care to improve care coordination, nudge behavior changes at home, and identify missing billing information needed for claims. She notes the secret to creative careers is collaboration; the VA is a large ecosystem where mission-driven people work across departments, facilities, and communities to ensure we can deliver the best care just in time.
Dr. Joshi's recognition with the AMSUS Physician Award is a testament to her creativity, dedication, and transformative impact on the landscape of military and federal medicine. Congratulations to Dr. Joshi on this well-deserved achievement!
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DJ is a U.S. Marine Corps Veteran who was born and raised in Florida. He served over 11 years, through OIF/OEF, and experienced challenges with PTSD connected to his service. “I was really struggling after I got out, and started getting mental health care from VA.”
Now receiving care at the James A. Haley Veterans Hospital in Tampa, Florida, DJ was referred to THRIVE by his VA Primary Care provider. Transforming Health and Resiliency through Integration of Values-based Experiences, better known as THRIVE, is an immersive experience rooted in positive psychology and values based living concepts.
Guided by VA facilitators, THRIVE allows Veterans to be amongst a group of Veteran peers, guided on a transformative 14-week journey towards living their best lives. THRIVE sessions explore Veterans’ sense of purpose, self-esteem, whole-health, and life satisfaction through topics including sleep, mental health, stress reduction, healthy relationships, sexual health, spirituality, and more. “THRIVE helped open my eyes to things I don’t often think deeply about, like sleep, work-life purpose, and healthy relationships,” said DJ.
THRIVE also recognizes the importance of community, which is why the program’s group format allows Veterans to connect and develop supportive networks. Diverse groups of Veterans come together and build a sense of community again, similar to what they had in the military. The group helps to engage them with their health care teams as well, giving them a sense of control over their own health. Veterans participating in THRIVE workshops have reported a reduction in depression, anxiety, and an improvement in life satisfaction.
“I’ve been to the bottom and finally feel that I am at eye level with the sea – I’m not drowning anymore. I can breathe,” said DJ. “I still use the work-life purpose and healthy relationship principles everyday… I do more family time now than I used to, when I would sleep in on the weekends and not really talk to anyone.”
THRIVE is now available to Veterans at 23 VA facilities. “I would tell any Veteran to give THRIVE a try. Until the program pushed me to think about things like nutrition and mental health, I didn’t know what help I needed. THRIVE reinforced what help I did need,” said DJ.
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On February 25 in Los Angeles, hear from Mission Daybreak at ViVE 2024. VHA’s Dr. Amanda Lienau and Dr. Todd Burnett will kick off by discussing how VHA's Office of Healthcare Innovation and Learning and Office of Mental Health and Suicide Prevention are collaborating on suicide prevention innovations. After a fireside chat and Q&A, two Mission Daybreak collaborator teams will demo their solutions:
Battle Buddy is a virtual human-led mental health and wellness application that promotes resiliency among Veterans at risk for suicide.
ReflexAI is an artificial intelligence-powered tool that can help the Veterans Crisis Line train and maintain a team of responders that can meet the needs of every Veteran who reaches out.
Reducing Veteran suicides is a top clinical priority for VA. That’s why VA launched the Mission Daybreak grand challenge in 2022, which awarded $20 million to suicide prevention solutions that can meet the diverse needs of Veterans. Building off the work that began with the grand challenge, the mission brings Veterans, researchers, technologists, advocates, healthcare providers, health innovators, and service members together to collaborate and advance suicide prevention solutions.
Mission Daybreak is now providing promising solutions with additional technical assistance, including human-centered design and learning, as well as piloting opportunities.
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Diffusion also hosted an engaging panel discussion led by Diffusion Specialist, Carl McCoy. The panel, titled “When Do I Spark and When Do I Shark?” discussed how innovators can gauge which VHA IE program is the right fit for their innovation.
The panel discussed exciting upcoming opportunities, such as the VHA Innovators Network's Go Fish! and new site applications and VHA Shark Tank Competition which open April 1st, and the VHA Innovation Ecosystem Fellowship applications, which open May 14th.
The Diffusion of Excellence Community quarterly calls are a great way to stay updated with Diffusion news and opportunities. VA employees can join the Diffusion of Excellence Teams Channel to sign up for the quarterly call invite series and keep up with the latest Diffusion news. Questions? Email VADiffusionSupport@VA.gov for more information.
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Dr. Minh Ho is the Acting Chief of Infectious Disease and an Epidemiologist at the Orlando VA Healthcare System, and 2023 VHA IE Entrepreneur in Residence fellow. His innovation journey began back in 2017 when he started noticing a worrying trend: some Veterans were getting Hepatitis C repeatedly, primarily due to needle sharing during drug use. Dr. Ho and his team, which includes pharmacists, social workers, and nurses, joined together to develop an idea to create a program that would safely provide clean syringes and teach Veterans safer practices. This idea, known as harm reduction, was more than just providing clean syringes; it was about introducing a whole new way of thinking within VA. Dr. Ho received support for this idea through the VHA Innovators Network Spark-Seed-Spread program, first as a Seed then a Spread.
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Dr. Ho and his team have made some exciting strides since they first began their project, which started with only donations. One of their biggest achievements has been creating a pathway that allows VA to purchase syringes directly. Dr. Ho and his team have been involved in the effort since the early stages, having the opportunity to shape new policies alongside national leaders. Now, VA is providing free harm reduction kits.
On the local front, the team is working to bring vending machines to their community-based outpatient clinic inspired by the model created by Dr. Rife-Pennington at the San Francisco VA Health Care System. The machines will be stocked with harm reduction supplies like syringes, fentanyl test strips, and wound care products, accessible to Veterans at all times. The team’s goal is to make these life-saving tools as accessible as possible.
Dr. Ho and his team have received excellent feedback from Veteran stakeholders. “As anyone who is an alcoholic or drug addict knows, it’s a day-to-day, one day at a time kind of thing. So, the fact they have a program where I can be seen and heard and I’m trying to fight for my life and they have tools, it’s empowering for a Veteran to know that they have these options out there. I wish more people knew about it,” said one Veteran.
Dr. Ho and his longtime collaborator and Dr. Beth Dinges, also a 2023 VHA IE Entrepreneur in Residence Fellow, recently attended VHA Diffusion of Excellence's Diffusion Academy Event, where they refined their business case and plans for growth and sustainment.
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