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Returning Home to Battle was a yearlong campaign of coverage by The Center for Investigative Reporting that examined conditions greeting veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan. CIR's investigation had two main areas of emphasis, one in each of the major federal government bureaucracies created to help veterans: VA benefits and VA healthcare. One delved into the reasons hundreds of thousands of veterans were waiting for disability compensation decisions. The other questioned the VA's over-use of heavily addictive narcotic painkillers, which has contributed to an overdose rate among the agency's patients of nearly double the national average. Both investigations exposed unique information and provided localized data never before available to the public. Both prompted immediate results.