Data resource profile: The Veterans Affairs—Health and Retirement Study aging veteran cohort
- Stalter, L., Venkatesh, M., Jacobs, J., Stype, A., Langa, K. M., Byers, A. L., & Wyman, M. F. (2025). Data resource profile: The Veterans Affairs—Health and Retirement Study aging veteran cohort. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1111/jgs.19368
- Constituting 72% of all living United States (US) Veterans, adults 50 and older represent the majority of Veterans Health Administration (VA) users [1]. VA administrative records represent a rich source of information on health status, healthcare utilization and costs, and demographics, but do not include non-VA funded healthcare use, detailed socioeconomic information, and other social determinants of health that are increasingly the focus of aging research [2]. The Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a longitudinal survey of individuals aged 50 or older across the US, provides high-quality data on these topics through in-depth queries about lifestyle, health and health service use, economic status, and family structure [3, 4]. We describe the Veterans Affairs—Health and Retirement Study (VA-HRS) linked data, which links these two unique sources for 2360 Veterans aged 50 and older.
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