Million Veteran Program (2021-2026)
VA’s Million Veteran Program is a groundbreaking genetic research effort focused on studying how genes, lifestyles, military experience, and exposures affect health and wellness. Over the past four years, I’ve worked alongside a dedicated MVP support team at DIS to interview and film nearly 30 researchers, program leads, and veteran participants across the country to produce content aimed at highlighting veteran stories and reasons for joining the program, recruiting additional veteran volunteers, and celebrating the milestone of hitting one million enrolled veterans (reached in late 2023).
This video work, along with the full suite of communications and outreach products our team offered during the four years we supported this campaign, was awarded the “Best of Silver Anvil 2024” award at the 2024 PRSA Silver Anvil Awards for excellence in strategic public relations.
Data to Impact - 2026
MarCom 2026 Gold Award
In April of 2026, our team traveled to Boston, MA to visit the Jamaica Plain VA Medical Center and highlight the work being done by the Million Veteran Program. With more than 1 million veterans currently enrolled in the program and over a decade of ongoing research, MVP has begun to inform new approaches to care for veterans through studies like ProGRESS (Prostate Cancer, Genetic Risk, and Equitable Screening Study) and ROAR (Return of Actionable Results). We spoke with program leadership, researchers, and physicians to learn more.
Shot, edited, and produced by Bennett Layman (interview footage of Phil Tsao and Jodie Trafton shot by Vaughan Dill). Scripting by Alexis Oriel, Haylee Barker, Jenna Lenskold, Ryan Phillips, and Bennett Layman.
In addition to the main video, we also created an additional series of eight short videos to highlight researchers, study participants, and the advancements being made by MVP (4 videos shown here).
Veteran Testimonial Videos
Shot in Washington, D.C. in 2022, this video series highlights the stories of five military veterans – their experiences in the military, transitioning to civilian life, and their reasons for enrolling in the Million Veteran Program.
Edited and produced by Bennett Layman. Shot by Josiah Renken and Brandon Carr. Scripting by Jenna Lenskold, Ryan Phillips.
In addition to the primary video shown above, the project also included the creation of 6 additional testimonial videos focused on each of the five veterans interviewed and their personal reasons for joining MVP:
To accompany the social media outreach campaign associated with this project, I also created 30-second short form videos for each veteran participant in both horizontal and vertical aspect ratios, along with an adjusted graphics treatment for vertical videos:
One Million Reasons Why – Million Milestone Video
In November of 2023, the Million Veteran Program hit the mark it had been aiming to reach for over a decade – one million veterans enrolled in the largest genetic research project of its kind. To highlight this occasion, our team visited the Jamaica Plain VA Medical Center in Boston, MA to film footage of the program’s flagship genetic lab and give MVP’s leadership team a chance to reflect on the program’s history on the eve of reaching the goal they’d set 10 years earlier:
