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The Million Veteran Program (MVP) is the nation’s largest biorepository of Veteran data and has one of the world’s most diverse cohorts of any genetic research program. Thanks to our partnership and collaboration with more than 800 researchers, MVP data has already led to 100+ research projects, 400+ publications, and new findings about conditions such as anxiety, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), heart disease, kidney disease, cancer, and more.

MVP Participants Contribute Three Types of Information

VA Health Records

  • The VA electronic health record (EHR) contains records for millions of Veterans, including the roughly 9 million Veterans currently using the VA, and millions more who used VA care in the past. It contains patient data from inpatient and outpatient visits including diagnoses, procedures, laboratory tests, prescriptions, clinical notes, reports, and imaging. 
  • VA was one of the first hospital systems to adopt an EHR system in the 1980s and the current system has been in use for more than 40 years. 
     

Self-Reported Surveys 

  • The MVP Baseline and Lifestyle Surveys collect information on Veterans’ health and well-being, including military experiences and exposures, family medical history, dietary habits, and much more. MVP requests that every participant complete these surveys, which have been in use since the program launched in 2011. 
  • In 2016, MVP launched a Gulf War Era Survey to collect information from a subset of participants who served during that era.
  • In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the MVP COVID-19 Survey was developed and collected from participants between May 2020 and September 2021 to understand how the pandemic affected Veterans. 
  • To date, MVP’s 1,050,000+ Veteran enrollees have completed: 

600,000+

Baseline Surveys

490,000+

Lifestyle Surveys

45,000+

Gulf War Surveys

255,000+

COVID-19 Surveys

Genetic Data from Blood Draw (Omics Data)

When a Veteran completes the blood draw, their sample is analyzed to generate genotype data. Additionally, other omic data such as whole genome sequencing, methylation, and metabolomics, are generated on subsets of the samples. The remaining sample is stored for future use in a VA Central Biorepository. MVP has generated the following data for use by researchers: 

  • Data from ~ 650,000 genotyped individuals using custom Affymetrix genotype array is available to approved researchers
  • Minority-specific genotype array with more than 750,000 genetic variants, including more than 300,000 that are more common in minority populations and relevant to their health and well-being (coming soon) 
  • ~100,000 whole genome sequences are currently available to approved researchers
  • Data from ~40,000 methylation arrays is available to approved researchers
  • Metabolomics and proteomics pilots (underway) 
     

Other Data Sources

National Death Index (NDI)

NDI contains date and cause of death obtained from state vital statistics offices. The data also includes ICD descriptions for underlying cause of death and the description of additional conditions. It serves to supplement information on death records in the VA and is provisioned by request to approved MVP projects.

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid   Services (CMS)

CMS data is provisioned by request to approved MVP projects and contains data on active MVP enrollees for health care information captured by Medicare or Medicaid such as demographics, beneficiary summaries, inpatient and outpatient visits, vital status, facility and long-term care information, and prescription drugs.

MVP requests additional data from sources both internal and external to VA based on the needs of research projects. This data is integrated into the MVP repository for active MVP enrollees. Other data sources include: 

 

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