ANN ARBOR, MI — VA clinicians may be doing too good of a job of controlling blood pressure in patients with diabetes, according to research suggesting that as many as 8% of those veterans may have been overtreated.

Early adoption of insulin therapy for diabetes can stop or delay progression of the disease and help avoid complications. But change has been slow, even at VA, where more than a million veterans get treatment for the disease. A VA pharmacist offers advice to clinicians on how to initiate earlier insulin treatment.

For the past five years, VA has struggled to implement a systemwide weight-reduction program to combat obesity rates among veterans receiving care. More than one-third of veterans receiving care qualified as obese in 2006, and VA believed that lowering obesity also would lower weight-related illness, including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, osteoarthritis and hypertension — all of which occur in high rates among VA’s population. ¹

FORT HARRISON, MT — For some veterans, “insulin resistance” is not only a physiological condition, it is a state of mind — one the VA Montana Healthcare System in Fort Harrison hopes to overcome with a program that pilots the use of insulin pens.

A model created by NIH researchers challenges some commonly held diet beliefs, including that eating 3,500 fewer calories, or burning them through exercise, always results in a pound of weight loss.

With responsibility for treating diabetes in more than a million veterans in its primary-care population, VA is at the leading edge of care for the metabolic disease.

Following encouraging results from a demonstration project that involved 36 Indian Health Service (IHS), tribal and urban Indian health programs, the IHS has added “Youth and Type 2 Diabetes Prevention and Treatment” to its list of best practices.

WASHINGTON — Military veterans injured between 2001 and 2005 are now retroactively eligible for traumatic injury benefits, even if they never deployed overseas to battle zones in Iraq and Afghanistan.

WASHINGTON — Receiving an Internet-based, interactive voice-response call on a mobile phone may help low-income patients in developing countries manage their diabetes, according to a new study led by a researcher with the Veterans Affairs Ann Arbor Healthcare System and University of Michigan.

WEST HAVEN, CONN. — Over the last few years, telemedicine has partially redefined how health care is delivered to patients, especially those who do not live near medical centers. For the most part, it has been a one-to-one exchange. One patient communicates with one physician, or one physician communicates with a specialist at another facility.