When VA Research Stalls, Veterans Lose Access to Lifesaving Care

In a converted janitor's closet at the Bronx Veterans Affairs (VA) hospital, physicist Rosalyn Yalow helped invent radioimmunoassay, now used worldwide to diagnose conditions from thyroid disease to hormone disorders. Her work is part of a larger story: VA staff have earned three Nobel Prizes in Physiology or Medicine for discoveries underpinning treatments used by millions.

The quiet reality of the VA is this: it is not just where care is delivered. It is where care is built.

Across a system serving 9 million patients at 1,380 healthcare facilities, the same infrastructure that connects a veteran's service history to clinical encounters also tracks outcomes, generates evidence, and refines treatment in real time, creating one of the nation's largest healthcare data assets. From our time at VA, we saw firsthand how research is embedded in the care itself.

However, since early 2025, the Trump-Vance administration’s actions have hollowed out this integrated system. In January 2026, the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee’s minority staff reported that significant staffing losses at the Department led to serious workforce shortages, increased wait times for mental health care, and increased risks to veterans' care, benefits, and research programs. 

These trends threaten the foundation of VA research programs. A VA with little or no protected time for research will be less competitive in recruiting top clinicians, who deliberately choose institutions where they can advance healthcare. Strip that away, and VA may be unable to attract or retain the talent it, and the veterans it serves, depends on.

To further compound these workforce challenges, on May 29, 2026, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and multiple agencies including the VA, proposed to revise the Uniform Guidance for Federal Financial Assistance. The proposed rule would allow senior political appointees to override scientific peer review and terminate federal grants they deem misaligned with agency priorities. This could force the cancellation of VA health studies that directly inform clinical protocols and care standards for all veterans, including research on disparities in outcomes related to race, ethnicity, and gender.

VA healthcare is a three-legged stool: patient care, education, and research. These are not parallel programs sharing a roof; they are a single integrated system, each reinforcing the others. Research shapes how clinicians treat patients. Treating patients generates the evidence that drives research. Education produces the people who do both. Remove one leg and you do not have a shorter stool. You have no stool at all.

OMB’s proposed rule puts direct pressure on that research leg. When VA research stalls, the loss is measured in treatments that never reach the veterans who need them, and in a system that, once hollowed out, cannot easily be rebuilt.

Your voice matters in this process. If you are a researcher, a VA academic affiliate, a Veterans Service Organization, or a veteran—especially from a community that has been underrepresented in research—please explain how this rule would affect the studies you conduct, the care you receive, or the services you provide. Specific examples, such as research that could be delayed or canceled, programs that might be cut back, or veterans who would lose access to innovative care, are especially powerful. Submit your comment through the Federal Register by July 13, 2026.

This rule is one of the choices that will shape what kind of VA future generations inherit. 

At her Nobel ceremony, Rosalyn Yalow put it plainly: "We bequeath to you, the next generation, our knowledge but also our problems…let us join hands, hearts and minds to work together for their solution." Right now, we are deciding which future veterans will inherit.
 
About the authors
Josh Jacobs is a Civil Service Strong fellow and former Under Secretary for Benefits at the Department of Veterans Affairs. Nicole Nedd is a Civil Service Defense and Innovation fellow and a former VA national program director.