How we work
Who we’re built for, why we have no conflict of interest, and the rules we hold every dollar to. Independence is the point of this organization. These are the rules that protect it.
How we work
What we find comes from public inspector general reports, court records, and policy documents — not hidden files. The problem was never that this information was secret. It’s that the system is so siloed, and so sprawling, that almost no one has the vantage point to connect it. When something genuinely goes beyond public record, we bring in real legal support alongside everything else we’ve already documented — that’s the exception, not how this work usually goes.
This can’t be run by VA, DoD, or any organization with a stake in the outcome — not as a judgment against the people who work inside those systems, just as a matter of basic incentives. An organization with something to protect can’t fully investigate itself. Behind The 22 answers to the people it serves, and to no one else.
We’re working to build real, in-person volunteers who can walk alongside someone through operational, policy, and workflow advocacy — not legal aid, not crisis support, but the specific, unglamorous work of pushing a broken process to actually change. That kind of support doesn’t currently exist for this community. We intend to build it.
Every claim we make is built from public documentation and hard evidence — historical records, government reports, court decisions — precisely so that anyone can check it. The more people who understand how to verify this kind of evidence, and how to advocate for themselves and others with it, the better. We’re not interested in being the only ones who can do this work.
That same openness applies to what we intend to build with it. We’re not planning to stay passive — documenting problems and hoping someone else acts. We intend to draft actual legislation from what we find, the way our first proposal already does, modeled directly on our own evidence.
Who we’re built for
Behind The 22 is built to work at every level of risk — including the moderate and severe risk that many veterans, service members, and first responders live with.
Support for mild risk is absolutely needed, and we’re not saying otherwise. But in our experience, many services are built for mild risk and offered to everyone. Families facing moderate or severe risk can lose valuable time being passed from service to service, none of them quite right for their needs.
Many organizations that do this work don’t have the tools to see what happens after a person leaves their care. That’s a gap in tools, not in caring. The BT22 Profile is built to follow a person across the systems that touch them, so the whole picture exists in one place.
No conflict of interest
Some of the research on these populations is done by organizations that also run the systems being studied, or that otherwise have a stake in the outcome. That isn’t an accusation. It’s a structural conflict: an organization with something to protect can’t fully investigate itself. In our experience, it’s part of why the data on moderate and severe cases is so patchy.
Behind The 22 has a stake in your life, not in an institution. That’s why we can look across the systems and tell you what we see.
Actions, not vanity metrics
We aren’t interested in numbers that sound good. We want to know whether a specific problem got fixed.
When the evidence shows a weak point, we want veterans, first responders, those who are both, and their families and circles of support to know exactly what to target, and to use a strategy.
| A number that sounds good | What we look at instead |
|---|---|
| People reached | Referrals that were ordered and actually completed |
| Screenings completed | Records requests that were answered, and how long they took |
| Awareness raised | Weak points identified, and whether each one was fixed |
These are examples of the difference, not a list of our measures.
Independence
Independence is the point of this organization. These are the rules that protect it.
No funder can direct us to investigate a named person or institution for a predetermined adverse conclusion.
No funder can suppress, delay, alter, or veto a supported finding because it’s unfavorable to the funder or a partner.
Study questions can be scoped jointly. Coding, quality checks, analysis, and reporting follow the approved protocol.
Donors get no access to protected participant data. Only a legitimate research partner, separately authorized under our governance, ever could.
Research agreements preserve our right to publish, subject only to privacy, security, and limited factual review.
Material financial relationships with defense, healthcare, legal, technology, or other affected sectors are disclosed.
Restricted money is used only for its stated purpose. Unrestricted support protects our independence and continuity.
Funding incentives never pressure families, veterans, or workers to take part, or affect how their case is coded.
Our evidence can support corrective policy, but conclusions follow the evidence, not a funder’s preferred outcome.
