Allostatic Load: A Review of the Literature was funded under the Department of Veterans' Affairs, Applied Research Program and conducted by the Centre for Military and Veterans’ Health.

The report summarises the concepts of homeostasis, allostasis and allostatic load, how chronic stress leads to allostatic load, and examples of the physical and mental conditions which correlate with allostatic load. Allostatic load is an evolving model and only one of several models devised to examine and understand the long term health effects of stress. The model cannot explain all causes of ill-health and disease, however it is emerging as a useful model for investigating how stress experienced during military service may impact negatively on health. There are significant opportunities to improve our understanding of measurement tools and the myriad of challenges related to establishing causality between stress and longer term health outcomes.

As part of the Government response to the 'Independent Study into Suicide in the Ex-service Community', DVA commissioned the Australian Institute of Suicide Research and Prevention to undertake a review of the Operation Life Suicide Awareness workshops to ensure they were evidenced based. DVA accepted all recommendations made in the final report. 

The Department of Defence and the Department of Veterans’ Affairs commissioned The University of Queensland to use data from 2007/8 studies of deployment to East Timor, Bougainville and the Solomon Islands to investigate the issue of anti-malarial drugs and long-term health.

This report presents the results of a descriptive analysis of self-reported anti-malarial drug use on deployment and self-reported physical and mental health. The analysis focused on the East Timor and Bougainville studies.

The overall aim of this project was to compare the health and use of health services of women in their 70’s and 80’s who are DVA Gold Card holders, or wives of DVA Gold Card holders, with similarly aged women in the general community who have no connections with DVA. The Centre for Military and Veterans’ Health (CMVH) conducted this project, with the data sourced from the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health (ALSWH) which includes a random sample of over 10,000 women born 1921-26.