# Center to Improve Veteran Involvement in Care (CIVIC)

> **NIH VA I50** · PORTLAND VA MEDICAL CENTER · 2024 · —

## Abstract

The mission of the Center to Improve Veteran Involvement in Care (CIVIC), located at VA Portland Health
Care System (VAPORHCS), is to conduct research that empowers Veterans to improve their health through
engagement in self-care, engagement with VA and non-VA healthcare systems, and engagement in health
services research. This mission supports several VHA 2018-2024 strategic objectives including empowering
Veterans to improve their health and to make healthcare decisions by ensuring transparency of information,
and emphasizing Veterans’ and their families’ whole health and wellness. Secretary Shulkin’s 2018 Five
Priorities for VA reaffirm the importance of creating new processes and systems that support Veteran-centric
decision-making around care and care settings. CIVIC proposes six main goals and two focus areas. The first
goal (Focused Area 1) is to conduct research that helps Veterans with mental health conditions, including pain,
improve their health and safety. This focus area includes research on suicide prevention, the use of
prescription opioids, and optimization of non-opioid pain care—these topics are also high priorities in VHA. The
second goal (Focused Area 2) is to conduct research that helps Veterans, their supports, and their clinicians
create and sustain effective healthcare relationships. Additional CIVIC goals are to 3) support additional high
value, innovative research that falls outside of our focused areas; 4) collaborate with a diverse set of
stakeholders including Veterans to enhance research and build bridges between innovation and evidence; 5)
further develop CIVIC expertise in dissemination and implementation; and 6) support career development of
promising junior and established investigators to build health services research capacity.
CIVIC's Operational Partners are the Office of Mental Health and Suicide Prevention; Office of Patient
Centered Care and Cultural Transformation; Pain Management; VISN-20; and VAPORHCS. Veteran
stakeholders provide ongoing feedback about CIVIC operations and directions through our Veteran
Engagement Group. Each of CIVIC’s 19 Core investigators is a faculty member of VAPORHCS’s primary
academic affiliate, Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU). CIVIC’s Director is Steven Dobscha MD, and
its Associate Director is Linda Ganzini MD, MPH. Guided by its Steering Committee (which includes
Operations partners, two Veterans, and representatives from OHSU and other Centers of Innovation) and
CIVIC’s Executive Committee, CIVIC will, over the next five years, capitalize on several areas of methodologic
and content expertise to achieve its strategic goals. These areas of strength include use of mixed-methods
research; acquisition and synthesis of information from multiple stakeholders; expertise in understanding
Veterans’ healthcare experiences; evidence synthesis; Veteran engagement in research; suicide prevention;
opioids, pain and substance use disorder; lung cancer; and the use of technology t...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 11095709
- **Project number:** 5I50HX002718-02
- **Recipient organization:** PORTLAND VA MEDICAL CENTER
- **Principal Investigator:** Steven K Dobscha
- **Activity code:** I50 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** VA
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** —
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2018-10-01 → 2023-09-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/11095709

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 11095709, Center to Improve Veteran Involvement in Care (CIVIC) (5I50HX002718-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/11095709. Licensed CC0.

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