One Turnover Away

Summary: Veteran Voices in Research showcases the value of Veteran collaborators across recent history, and how their experiences, values, and expertise improve the quality, relevance, and impact of VA research. This issue, "One Turnover Away," follows a Marine's path from combat deployments to a research advisory board-and shows how a Veteran's knowledge of his own community informed new ways of thinking about how nonprofits and VA can work together to provide better care and services.

Paul Berry (left) and Sam Rodriguez, Veteran Outreach and Program Coordinator for the University of North Carolina's THRIVE program dedicated to treating traumatic brain injuries and related health conditions.

Paul Berry, a retired Marine Corps sergeant major, volunteered for service in 1986, and went on to serve, by his own count, "fifteen years pre-9/11 and fifteen years post-9/11." In those thirty years, he was deployed eleven times. "I'm physically broken," he said. But he's as active as he's ever been, well into the second career he launched after coming home: making sure the Veterans who come home behind him don't slip through the gap where VA care ends and community support begins.

That career began at the USO of North Carolina, where, in his first years out of uniform, Berry became a "plank owner"-the Navy's term for an original crew member-of NCServes, a statewide initiative delivered through four regional networks, each adapted from the AmericaServes model developed at Syracuse University's D'Aniello Institute for Veterans and Military Families. The model is distinguished by a coordinating hub or "quarterback" organization and a shared technology platform, Unite Us, that connects Veteran families with housing, transportation, employment, and other social needs across a vast community of partners, rather than funneling them into a dead end at one overwhelmed office. Berry spent his first years as a Veteran training and briefing the partners who made his network run.

In 2020, Berry moved to one of the other quarterback agencies, Veterans Bridge Home, a Charlotte-based nonprofit that helps Veterans in the Carolinas successfully transition home after military service by identifying their needs and connecting them to available community, state, and federal resources. As director of strategic partnerships, he knew as much as anybody in the Carolinas about what worked, and what didn't, in building and sustaining the connections needed to help returning Veterans. It wasn't long after he'd joined Veterans Bridge Home that he heard from Dr. Leslie Hausmann, a researcher with VA's Center for Healthcare Evaluation, Research, and Promotion (CHERP). Her team wanted to learn more about what makes it easier, or harder, for VA hospitals and community organizations to work together to meet Veterans' everyday needs-and whether collaborating more closely actually resulted in Veterans connecting with the help they needed.

"I needed Veterans who were part of running those networks," Hausmann said. Among others, she tapped Berry, who had spent years working inside the AmericaServes model, as both a source of information for the study and, after the study was completed, an advisor about what to do with its findings. What the team tapped him for surprised him. It wasn't names or numbers. "What they were picking out of me," he said, "was: 'Do you pick up the phone and call somebody in a leadership position at the Durham VA? Yes or no? If yes, how many? And who?'-not by name but by billet, by subspecialties." His responses gave insights into how relationships were built and sustained, and helped characterize the level of engagement between VA and community organizations.

Berry said he brought a conviction to the study that was implied, but not stated outright, in the resulting article published in 2024: "A lot of the relationships that nonprofits have with local VA medical centers," he said, "are one turnover away from going away." One friendly leader isn't enough; ties must be built referral by referral, and embedded deeply enough that a single personnel change isn't going to sever them.

Once the results were in, Berry served on an advisory panel that helped make sense of them, organizing and prioritizing what the research had revealed. In addition to the peer-reviewed study, the research team and the advisory panel together produced a plain-language guide for community groups on how to build a bridge to VA. The peer-reviewed paper's acknowledgments credit the advisory panel for "invaluable insight that helped contextualize study findings."

Berry is modest about his input, but he remembers how it felt. "I felt very appreciated and very empowered when we did it." His one regret is that it didn't happen earlier: "It would have been nice," he said, "to have had Dr. Hausmann's research paper five years ago."

The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the Department of Veterans Affairs or the United States government.