VET TRIIP INC

Goals of Vet TRIIP, Inc.

1. Continue to provide high quality healthcare services for veterans, service members, their families and caregivers struggling with intense symptoms of chronic pain and Post-Traumatic Stress.

2. Continue to provide a safe environment and high quality training for healthcare professionals and veteran peers who donate and provide their services to benefit veterans and service members, their families and service providers living with chronic pain and Post-Traumatic Stress.

3. Continue to develop, implement, refine and validate effective, community-based, integrative programs to benefit veterans and service members, their families and service providers living with chronic pain and Post-Traumatic Stress and which support and enhance outcomes for existing counseling and medication programs provided by the DoD, VA and Vet Centers.

4. Duplicate and expand the successful Vet TRIIP model programs in major cities and smaller communities in Texas with significant populations of veteran and service members.

Leveraging Volunteers / Community Resources
Vet TRIIP taps an underutilized resource of healthcare professionals who want to support veterans/service members by donating their services for integrative programs. Vet TRIIP utilizes existing community resources, e.g., church facilities during off-peak times (Mondays, Fridays). This collaboration creates relationships between community organizations; volunteers providing these unique combinations of services; veterans, service members and families; and VA/DoD staff who provide traditional medications and counseling—enhancing outcomes for the benefit of all four groups.

Leveraging Integrative Healthcare
The DoD/VA have developed, validated and encouraged their staff to implement patient-centered, integrative healthcare programs, especially for pain management and PTSD. Immediate benefits are enhanced outcomes and significant cost savings. Long-term, these programs result in healthier lifestyles and higher quality lives. Unfortunately, implementation of such innovative programs has lagged behind the advancements in treatment models and clinical studies which validated their benefits. Vet TRIIP has become a technology incubator for model integrative programs which can be duplicated in Texas communities.

VA healthcare models will be transformed when VA staff are educated/experienced in delivering and veterans become educated/experienced in receiving and participating in patient-centered, integrative programs.

Creating the Vet TRIIP Model
High quality programs with safe integrative environments using local healthcare professionals who donate their services to serve veterans/service members must be created and their effectiveness demonstrated. These programs create collaborative networks of veterans, VA/DoD staff and local service providers who have experience working together for synergistic and mutually beneficial outcomes:
Healthcare volunteers get to use their professional skills to serve veterans;
veterans participate more in their own care and receive better outcomes; and
overworked VA staff get to create better outcomes with less time and funding.

Duplicating Model Programs: Veterans Serving Veterans
Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and the National Alliance for Mental Illness (NAMI) have demonstrated the benefits of volunteer-led education programs to build knowledge, experience, relationships and networks of people who are mastering similar challenges.

We will never run out of veterans who living with Post-Traumatic Stress and chronic pain. Ultimately, veterans can provide the best insights, credibility and leadership to transform the VA system to empower and serve themselves and other veterans. Some veterans who have benefited from Vet TRIIP programs are getting training and medical degrees with plans to return to serve other veterans. Using these veteran leaders on point to find a path back to healthy, happy and productive civilian lives is our vision for the future.

Vet TRIIP continues to deliver high quality benefits in a safe environment while leveraging a cash budget with volunteer healthcare professionals and in-kind use of facilities (See chart below).

Vet TRIIP has developed the following capabilities:

Adapted the full-time programs for service members into a part-time model for veterans.

Leveraged cash budgets by recruiting, training, mentoring and managing volunteer services and in-kind use of facilities.

Trained additional teams of healthcare service providers and veteran peers to deliver high quality benefits in a safe environment at five locations in San Antonio, New Braunfels and Houston and continues to recruit, train and mentor healthcare professionals and veteran peers for other locations.

Developed the Stage 2 Healthy Lifestyles Trainings for transitioning veterans from the IIP Sessions to doing their own daily self-directed practices for long-term recovery.
Built word-of-mouth credibility with a network of staff in DoD/VA and Vet Center facilities, veteran service organizations and veteran/service member communities.

Vet TRIIP needs funding for the following to maintain and expand existing programs:
Hire existing trained and experienced service providers as a part-time/full-time team to launch other locations and to recruit, train and mentor other service providers.

Hire existing part-time support and administrative staff as full-time staff to maintain existing operations and launch and manage new programs in new locations in Texas communities with significant veteran populations.

Purchase equipment and supplies to operate existing programs and launch and maintain programs in new locations.

Increased funding of $400,000 annually would support doubling of capacity to address the current 5 month waitlist of veterans who are requesting Vet TRIIP services in the San Antonio area.

Since March, 2020, Vet TRIIP has replaced in-person, hands-on programs with Zoom conference calls and small groups to reduce/prevent COVID-19 contagion. Vet TRIIP is prepared to resume improved Integrative Immersion Process (IIP) Sessions with safe practices to reduce potential for contagion as soon as CDC Community Risk Levels return to Low and it is safe and prudent to do so.

Vet TRIIP has already created the following capabilities:
1. Adapted the full-time integrative immersion programs for service members demonstrated at Fort Bliss (Recovery and Restoration Program, Dr. John Fortunato, Ph.D.) and Fort Hood DAMC (Warrior Combat Stress Reset Program, Dr. Jerry Wesch, Ph.D.) into a duplicable model program for veterans, service members and their families living with chronic pain and Post-Traumatic Stress.
2. Leveraged cash budgets by recruiting, training, mentoring and managing volunteer service providers and in-kind use of facilities.
3. Trained teams of healthcare service providers to deliver high quality results in a safe environment at 5 locations in 3 cities and to recruit, train and mentor local volunteer healthcare professionals and veteran peers.
4. Developed the Stage 2 Healthy Lifestyles Training program based on the AHA's evidence-based Life’s Simple 7 program to empower veterans transitioning from IIP Sessions to doing their own daily self-directed practices.
5. Built credibility with collaborative network of DoD/VA and Vet Center staff, veteran service organizations and veteran/service member communities.
6. Developed online Zoom conference calls and How To videos to teach techniques used in Vet TRIIP programs.

Vet TRIIP will never run out of veterans and families living with Post-Traumatic Stress and chronic pain.
Since 9/11/2001, over 3.2 million troops have served in the Global War on Terror, principally in the Middle East (Afghanistan and Iraq). The Rand Report (2007) estimates that 30.7 percent of these men and women will develop Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), mild-Traumatic Brain Injury (mTBI with symptoms similar to PTSD) and/or Major Depression. That suggests that over 800,000 veterans (and their families) would live with symptoms which would benefit from Vet TRIIP programs. Studies from Vietnam veterans report an equivalent number of veterans will develop delayed-onset PTSD. Veterans with PTSD have dramatically higher failure rates for education, job/career and marriages as well as suicide rates. Veterans without PTSD symptoms have higher success in education, jobs/careers and marriages and reduced suicide rates relative to the average US population.

Vet TRIIP believes that “Everything improves with relaxation, more comfort and better sleep."

Vet TRIIP plans to expand programs and locations. We have not yet accomplished these goals:

1. Further collaborate with existing traditional programs for medications and counseling at more VA/DoD facilities and Vet Centers to enhance benefits to veterans, service members and their families.
2. Leverage more volunteer healthcare professionals and in-kind facilities use in conjunction with the inherent efficiencies of integrative patient-centered programs to expand programs at low cost.
3. Duplicate the existing effective Vet TRIIP model programs in communities throughout Texas with significant populations of veterans.