The Million Veteran Program (MVP) is a massive research effort run by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs that links veterans’ genetic data with their long-term health records to find better ways to prevent and treat disease. Over one million veterans have enrolled, making it one of the largest programs in the world studying the relationship between genes and health.
What MVP Is Trying to Do
At its core, MVP is a genomics and health database. Veterans who enroll provide a blood sample, complete health surveys, and allow researchers secure access to their VA medical records. Researchers then combine all three data streams to study how genes, lifestyle, military experiences, and environmental exposures shape health outcomes. The VA’s electronic health record system captures longitudinal care information with records that go back decades, giving researchers an unusually deep view of each participant’s health over time.
The practical goal is precision medicine: using a veteran’s genetic profile to guide treatment decisions. For example, the VA already offers pharmacogenomic testing at some facilities. These tests analyze your genes to predict how you’ll respond to commonly prescribed medications for pain, mental health conditions, cardiovascular disease, and infections. Your provider can then adjust the dose or choose a different drug based on your individual biology rather than a one-size-fits-all approach. MVP research feeds directly into expanding that capability across the VA system.
How Enrollment Works
Any veteran receiving care through the VA can join. The process has five steps: providing informed consent, completing health surveys, giving a blood sample, granting ongoing access to your health records, and agreeing to be contacted for future research opportunities. You can enroll in person at a participating VA facility or do it from home using a blood collection kit mailed to you. The blood draw is small, about two teaspoons.
After enrolling, you get access to two surveys. The Baseline Survey covers your health status, habits, military experience, medical history, and family medical history. Once that’s complete, you unlock the Lifestyle Survey, which asks about sleep, exercise, diet, environmental exposures, and general well-being. Veterans interested in enrolling can call the MVP Info Center at 866-441-6075 on weekdays or schedule a visit online at mvp.va.gov.
Why Diversity Matters to the Program
Over a quarter of MVP’s one million-plus participants represent a racial or ethnic minority, which is unusually high for a genetic research program. Most large genomic studies have historically drawn from predominantly European-descent populations, meaning their findings may not apply equally to everyone. Certain genetic traits and their associated diseases are more common in some populations than others, and those differences go unrecognized when study participants all share similar backgrounds.
MVP’s diversity has already paid off. One study identified nearly 3,500 genetic associations that were discoverable only because non-European populations were included. Those findings could lead to treatments and screening tools that work better across all demographic groups, not just the majority one.
How the Data Gets Used
MVP doesn’t just sit on a database. Researchers actively combine genetic data, survey responses, and decades of health records to investigate specific conditions. During the COVID-19 pandemic, for instance, MVP rapidly deployed a new survey to its participants and linked those responses to existing health records and genetic profiles. This allowed researchers to study which genetic factors made some people more vulnerable to severe illness, and to track how the disease played out differently depending on a person’s pre-existing health history.
The VA has also partnered with the Department of Energy through a collaboration called CHAMPION, which pairs MVP’s genetic and clinical data with the DOE’s supercomputing infrastructure and artificial intelligence expertise. That kind of computing power allows researchers to analyze patterns across hundreds of thousands of genetic profiles simultaneously, accelerating the pace of discovery far beyond what a single research team could manage.
How Participant Data Is Protected
Veteran health data stays behind the VA’s firewall. Analytic datasets cannot leave that system without a formal Data Use Agreement. When clinical notes are shared for approved research purposes, they go through multiple layers of protection: personally identifiable health information is scrubbed, the data is tokenized (meaning real identifiers are replaced with random codes), and encrypted before being transferred to any computing environment. Identifying details embedded directly in medical images or documents are also removed before release.
Participation is voluntary, and the informed consent process spells out exactly what researchers will and won’t have access to. The program is overseen by ethics review boards, and the consent agreement includes the right to be contacted about future research, which means you’ll know if your data is being used in a new way.