When William Becker, MD, and his colleagues at Yale School of Medicine began testing a radically different approach to pain care at Veterans Affairs clinics across the United States, they weren't just measuring symptom scores on a chart—they were tracking whether veterans could finally do the things that mattered to them. The result, published in JAMA, shows that an interdisciplinary "whole health" model cuts through chronic pain's grip on daily life far more effectively than medication-heavy standard care or therapy alone.
Chronic pain is a defining crisis for veterans. Up to 40 percent of VA patients live with pain lasting longer than three months—roughly twice the rate in the general population—often rooted in combat injuries and tangled with trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder. For decades, the system defaulted to opioids. But the VA recognized what many health systems were slower to admit: opioids don't solve chronic pain; they feed addiction and leave people stranded. In 2016, the department pivoted, embedding whole health teams at VA centers nationwide, offering integrative therapies alongside personal coaching and goal-setting.
To rigorously test whether this shift actually worked, Becker collaborated with Karen Seal, MD, of the University of California, San Francisco, and enrolled 764 VA patients with chronic pain into the first randomized trial of its kind. One group received whole health team intervention—a wellness coach and clinician trained in integrative therapies who centered each patient's personal values and life goals. A second group attended cognitive behavioral therapy in a group setting. A third received usual care. The researchers then measured pain interference: not just pain intensity, but the degree to which pain disrupted people's ability to work, sleep, socialize, and live.
After 12 months, the whole health model produced significantly greater improvements in pain interference than either cognitive behavioral therapy or usual care. Veterans in the whole health program weren't just feeling slightly better; they were experiencing meaningful gains in their ability to function—to show up for their families, hold down jobs, and pursue activities that made life worth living.
What makes this finding remarkable is its simplicity and humanity. The whole health approach didn't rely on a single fix or a pill. Instead, it assembled an interdisciplinary team that treated pain as something inseparable from a person's entire life. "VA patients' and staff's commitment to the study made it possible to generate meaningful evidence supporting whole health as a mind-and-body, patient-centered approach to pain care that really works," Seal said.
Becker's takeaway cuts to the heart of why this matters. "Let's start expanding access to these nonmedication treatments because they work, make people feel good, and they don't have many side effects or harms," he says. "Our study supports the VA's investment in this whole health model of care and shows that providing people with an array of tools is better than our standard treatment."
For veterans who have cycled through years of pain, failed treatments, and opioid regimens, this research offers something rarer than a new drug: evidence that a system can fundamentally change how it listens to and cares for people. The VA's experiment in whole health isn't just generating data—it's quietly demonstrating that when institutions step away from one-size-fits-all medicine and toward what actually makes people's lives better, real healing becomes possible.