![](https://fas.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/14d834_a27702cf152d4fa0a2d8a14bbf4e1ed3-mv2.jpg)
Expanding the Health Policy Mission of the Veterans Health Administration
Summary
With 1,255 VA medical facilities serving over 9 million veterans each year, the VA — through its Veterans Health Administration — maintains the largest integrated healthcare system in the United States. The VA is a national leader in delivering quality health services and driving innovation in high-priority healthcare issues such as telehealth, precision medicine, suicide prevention, and opioid safety. Yet the VA remains an under-appreciated and underutilized health policy stakeholder, involved in minimal interactions with other federal health agencies and exerting limited influence on the private healthcare system. This is a mistake. The VA is a robust healthcare provider with innovative clinical and operational practices that should be firmly entrenched in the national health policy conversation.
As a remedy, we propose strategically coordinating and consolidating the healthcare innovation, demonstration, and implementation capacities of the VA and HHS in order to ensure care of the highest possible quality across urgent issues. Elevating the VA as a major healthcare policy stakeholder will demonstrate the value of government-run healthcare, promote best practices for building an effective and forward-thinking healthcare system, and advance the VA’s “fourth mission” of supporting national preparedness.
The federal government plays a critical role in scaling up heat resilience interventions through research and development, regulations, standards, guidance, funding sources, and other policy levers. But what are the transformational policy opportunities for action?
Comprehensive heat safety standards are essential to mitigate the impacts of climate change on farmworkers and ensure the sustainability and resilience of agricultural operations.
Public deliberation, when performed well, can lead to more transparency, accountability to the public, and the emergence of ideas that would otherwise go unnoticed.
We built this inventory to enhance our collective understanding of how that software is used in the federal permitting process—and to open lines of dialogue for cross-agency and cross-sector learning.