Are You TBI Ready?
The Military Health System (MHS) recognizes March as Brain Injury Awareness Month to increase traumatic brain injury (TBI) awareness and improve health care providers’ ability to identify, care for, and treat service members and veterans who are affected by TBI. A TBI is a blow or jolt to the head that disrupts the normal function of the brain, and depending on severity, can have long lasting effects on anyone who experiences one.
According to the Defense Health Agency Traumatic Brain Injury Center of Excellence (TBICoE), 430,720 service members have been diagnosed with a first-time TBI since 2000. The most common form of TBI in the military is mild, and is also known as a concussion. To learn more about TBI numbers, visit the DoD TBI Worldwide Numbers page.
During Brain Injury Awareness Month, TBICoE and the MHS will promote the theme “Be TBI Ready” — recognizing that health care providers and others in the military community need to be aware of the latest educational trainings, research, fact sheets, and other available resources to prevent, diagnose, and treat TBI. The month will focus on the work of TBI stakeholders whose roles are to:
- Learn about TBI prevention, recognition, support, recovery, and reintegration.
- Increase awareness about TBICoE, its state-of-the-science research, and its many resources for health care providers, service members, veterans, and caregivers.
TBI Resources
Health care providers can "Be TBI Ready" with focused clinical recommendations, tools and the latest research.
Find more clinical tools at TBICoE's Provider Resources and Provider Education pages.
Service members, veterans, their families and caregivers can be "Be TBI Ready" with educational resources like fact sheets and support tools.
Visit TBICoE's Patient and Family Resources page for more fact sheets and resources.
For line leaders and commanders, this fact sheet provides instructions on when to evaluate service members involved in potentially concussive events in deployed settings.
Special "Picking Your Brain" Podcast Episodes!
Listen to new episodes focusing on TBI resources and the latest clinical tools to help providers and patients "Be TBI Ready!"
- "Being TBI Ready" In this episode, we feature interviews with Dr. Emma Gregory, TBICoE's research branch chief, Dr. Mark Ettenhofer, senior research neuropsychologist, and regional education coordinators Casey Becker (Landstuhl Germany), Chris Lewandoski (Fort Carson), and Kristen Benson (Fort Belvoir) to talk about how medical providers and others in the military community can "Be TBI Ready."
- "PRA and Safely Returning Service Members To Duty" In this episode, we discuss the recently revised Progressive Return to Activity Following Acute Concussion/Mild TBI Clinical Recommendation and feature interviews from TBICoE subject matter experts Dr. Keith Stuessi and Amanda Gano, and from Dr. Adam Susmarski, team physician in the Orthopedic Sports Medicine department and medical director of the Concussion Center of Excellence at the United States Naval Academy.
TBICoE · Picking Your Brain