NACDA Study Highlight: The Vietnam Era Twin Study of Aging (VETSA)

The Vietnam Era Twin Study of Aging (VETSA) projects began in 2002 with the goal of understanding risk and protective factors, including genetics, for cognitive and brain aging starting in midlife. This NIH-funded longitudinal study has multiple waves of data collection following the same group of non-patient, community-dwelling male veteran twins from when they were an average age of 56 to an average age of 68. The VETSA is heavily focused on in-person cognitive testing, yet includes a wide array of psychosocial, demographic, medical history, physical functioning, and personality measures.

During this webinar, we feature the VETSA data producers, who will discuss the history and applications of this collection, and the NACDA team will demonstrate how to access the VETSA materials.

Presenters: Carol E. Franz, PhD & Erik Buchholz, M.A., M.S.* University of California, San Diego

• Access the VETSA Data
• View the slides from the presentation

This webinar was originally recorded in February 2026. 

Links referenced in this slide deck:

• VETSA UC San Diego project website
• Seattle Epidemiologic Research and Information Center (ERIC) investigator access (VETSA registry) website
• NACDA website
• VETSA study page at NACDA
• ICPSR Terms of Use
• How to create an ICPSR/Researcher Passport Account
• NACDA Link tree
• ICPSR WEBSITE
• Attribute(s): slide 11 image source link

The flowchart mentioned in the presentation is included in the .zip file when the data is downloaded.