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Article History

Accepted: 6 November 2022

First Online: 22 December 2022

Declarations

:

: The present study was supported by grants of the HSR&D VA Merit Review Award Pilot Project Program (PPO 15-155: 2016-2017). This work was also partly supported with resources and the use of facilities at the Durham VA Medical Center, the Center of Innovation for Health Services and Research in Primary Care (CIN 13‐410), and Cooperative Studies Program Epidemiology Center (CSPEC) at the Durham VA Medical Center, and the Division of Gastroenterology, Duke University.

: The authors have no conflicts of interest that are directly relevant to the content of this study.

: The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board and the Research and Development Committee of Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System (FWA: 00002261) and Durham Veterans Affairs Health Care System (FWA:00001600).

: The Institutional Review Boards at the Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System and Durham Veterans Affairs Health Care System determined that this study met exempt human subjects research criteria Category 4 (i.e., use of existing data) and an informed consent form is not applicable.

: Not applicable.

: The US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) places legal restrictions on access to veteran’s healthcare data, which includes both identifying data and sensitive patient information. The analytic data sets used for this study are not permitted to leave the VA firewall without a Data Use Agreement, per VA privacy and data security policies and regulatory constraints. This limitation is consistent with other studies based on VA data. However, VA data are made freely available to researchers behind the VA firewall with an approved VA study protocol. For more information, please visit  or contact the VA Information Resource Center at vog.av@CeRIV.

: Coding strategies used in this study are available upon request.

: Conceptualization: AS, CMH, HT, FP, GPA, MIL, RJA, WT; data curation: JW, RGH; analysis: AS, JW; coding/code validation: JF, MS; funding acquisition: AS; methodology: AS, CMH, HT, JW, RGH, FP; project administration: AS, CMH; supervision: AS; validation: AS, MS; writing original draft: AS; writing, review and editing: AS, HT, JW, RGH, JF, MS, FP, GPA, MIL, RJA, WT, CMH. The corresponding author attests that all listed authors meet authorship criteria and that no others meeting the criteria have been omitted. The corresponding author further affirms that the article is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study. All the authors and acknowledged individuals in the paper read and approved the final version.

: The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the policies, position of, nor imply endorsement from the Department of Veterans Affairs or the US Government.

: This article reflects the views of the authors and does not necessarily reflect those of the US Food and Drug Administration.