The Veteran Metrics Initiative
2.4 million men and women have served in OIF/OEF/OND
Disabled veteran households have a 13.19% higher unemployment rate compared to unemployed vets
40% of veterans who enrolled in school six years ago left without a degree
Veterans' costs (health, disability, and benefits) comprise the 4th largest category of budgetary expenditure in the US
45% of OIF/OEF/OND vets have filed for disability claims with the VA
Two-thirds of OIF/OEF/OND vets have deployed multiple times in 11 years
23% of the US homeless population are veterans
320,000+ vets returning from Iraq and Afghanistan have experienced TBI during deployment
28% of military members deployed in support of OIF/OEF/OND come from the National Guard and Reserve
As America’s involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan draws down and our service members return following often long and repeated deployment cycles, more of our communities will be welcoming home veterans. While our nation is experiencing great economic challenges and shrinking federal and state resources, the needs of our veterans and their families continue to grow.
After completing extended and multiple deployments over the past 11 years in two wars, the 1% of the population who served must transition into communities with the 99% who did not. Too often this is difficult, if not impossible, for veterans to accomplish successfully without assistance.
The mission of the Veteran Metrics Initiative: Learning What Works for Veterans and their Families is to influence veteran reintegration success by identifying and evaluating the effects of specific interventions to learn what works, drive informed and impactful efforts to help military members, veterans and their families thrive, and set the conditions for future success.
The Vision: Enhance and Improve a Veteran's Life Now and in the Future
Veterans who fail to transition and reintegrate home successfully encounter higher rates of unemployment, family strife, poverty, substance abuse, risk for chronic illness, and homelessness. Communities want to work with federal, state and local agencies to welcome home and help reintegrate veterans and their families. Yet in this era of tight budgets and fiscal constraints, how does one ensure that a particular intervention effectively triggers the appropriate outcomes and long-term impacts?
Despite the billions of dollars being spent in the public and private sectors to help in the veteran transition and reintegration process, there currently are no commonly agreed upon metrics to assess the efficacy of the assistance provided, or the return on investment from the expenditure of those dollars. The Veteran Metrics Initiative, and the innovations that will flow from it, will address this in transformative ways.
The Veteran Metrics Initiative will establish a variety of methods that will allow agencies and organizations, public and private, to obtain data and effectively analyze how various interventions do, or do not, improve the overall health and well-being of veterans. The development of these methods disseminated through an open and transparent environment will help the DoD, VA and civilian providers of veteran-specific interventions better refine their efforts to make them as impactful and cost effective as possible.
How the Veteran Metrics Initiative Works
CP3 will build teams of federal, state and local subject matter experts across a broad spectrum of fields including DoD, VA and civilian medicine, public health, informatics, healthcare mathematical modeling, epidemiology, and social sciences. The teams will collaboratively design possible ways to gather quality data and measure the impacts of multiple interventions on veterans and their families. The designs will be tested to identify an array of metrics demonstrated to effectively measure which interventions positively impact veteran long-term success. The results of the team’s findings will be made public and freely available.
For more information about the Veteran Metrics Initiative: Learning What Works for Veterans and their Families, contact Katy Hussey-Sloniker, Project Coordinator, khusseysloniker@hjf.org.
The initiative currently has two projects underway:
1. Crowdsourcing & Datavisualization: Measuring Veteran Reintegration Outcome Success
2. Common Factors of Success