About National Center for Healthy Veterans
Research
NCHV Wellness

Assess outcomes, inform best practices, validate, and legitimize the use of conventional alternative/holistic wellness regimens utilizing state-of-the-art technologies and treatment approaches.
NCHV Research Objectives
Establish holistic R&D approach toward validating methodologies to support NCHV mission and vision.
- Utilize centralized, protected, IRB, and HIPPA compliant data repository to eliminate unnecessary, redundant research studies.
- Support collaboration of researchers and clinical experts across domains to ensure positive treatment outcomes and move scientific understanding forward.
Create a coordination and synchronization center for Veteran wellness.
- Deliver tangible results to team members, providers, and support staff professionals in a timely manner.
- Provide rapid RDTE capability to transform results into new evidence-based treatment and training regimens.
- Rapid dissemination of information to NCHV participants, staff, and community of interest.
- Advocate training and treatment potential to a broad community of interest.
Foundational
Faith-Based Research
Church Attendance and Health
National studies demonstrated that non-participation in religious activities increased suicide risk by almost 400% (Comstock & Partridge, 1972; Nisbet et al, 2000)
Religion and Suicide Prevention
Religion and spirituality have shown to reduce suicide rates for those suffering from Traumatic Brain Injury (Brenner et al, 2009)
Comparison of Religious and Nonreligious CBT
Participants showed reduced symptoms of post-treatment depression, balanced clinical adjustment, and lower recidivism with this mode of treatment. (Probst, et al., 1992)
Handbook of Religion and Health
57 of 68 studies (84%) that addressed the link between suicide and religion found that there were lower suicide rates among those more actively involved in faith-based activities (Koenig & Larsen, 2001)
Allowing Spirituality into the Healing Process
Most patients view their faith as a core aspect of life and want to address issues of spirituality in the context of their medical care (Kliewer, 2004)
Spirituality, Religion and CACREP Standards
Outside of pastoral counselors and chaplains trained in Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE), few clinicians have received formal training to work effectively with spiritually attuned and motivated clients (Burke et al, 1999; Schulte, Skinner & Claiborn, 2002)