Unlike the broken bone, a brain injury is often invisible.
We cannot see cognitive conflict, lost memories or chronic pain. But for millions of Americans with brain injury, the effect is lifelong and deep. Every day is a practice in your life, your relationships and future reconstruction.
Federal programs have made the journey of life a little more manageable with brain injury. But now, this support is under severe danger.
Budget and Management and Budget Office Leaked passback document Fraud outlines for health programs across the board. Among them: Elimination of almost every federal initiative supporting people with brain injuries.
Decades of investment in prevention and treatment can disappear with a stroke of a pen. These programs are not spending vain. They are an important investment for people with brain injury – now and in the future.
These proposed deductions will destroy the head up schedule of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, which trained coaches, parents and athletes to identify the convention before they cause permanent damage. They will collapse painful brain injury model systems, to provide care to the country’s gold standard and moderate to severe brain injuries to survive recovery for those survived. We will also lose the National Consulation Surveillance System and eliminate the collection of important data, showing where injuries are happening and how many lives are at risk.
Funding cuts for these programs put all of us at risk. Funding cuts means that a teenage football player holds a prevention and second resolution as there was no access to proper returns-to-play guidelines in his school. The blast injury loses access to a rehabilitation specialist trained to address an experienced cognitive loss. Already thin families lost small but important grants from careful responsibilities, who lived independently at home to their loved ones.
Brain injury is not only for “other people”. More than 64 million Americans At least one painful brain injury (TBI) has been maintained during his lifetime and millions of people suffer from non-painful brain injuries such as stroke, aneurysm or oxygen deficiency.
Federal investment in brain injury research and care is modest. In 2024, TBI Research Funding was an estimated $ 194 millionWhich is only $ 3.03 per person living with TBI – barely a cup of coffee cost. The figure is compared to TBI’s estimated $ 76.5 billion annual costs for emergency care, hospitalized, lost productivity and social services in the United States.
Cutting these programs is not a fiscal responsibility. This is public health misconduct.
Eliminating programs such as Heads Up, National Consulation Surveillance System and Core State Injury Prevention Program will withdraw for decades of decades. These cuts will create a world where more people suffer from the effects of brain injury, and we will have a low potential to identify and help needy people. It is not realistic to assume that the states will be able to take the cost of these programs, so many will probably go with a backup plan for continuity.
This should not be a political issue.
For decades, programs supporting brain injury, research and treatment have received bilateral support because the need for them is undisputed. Brain injuries do not discriminate against party, breed, income or geography. Brain injury can suddenly strike – a slip on ice, a collision on the ground, a car accident, a roadside bomb in the match – and change life forever.
Brain injury should be considered as a chronic health condition. Many remaining people struggle with frequent effects such as memory loss, depression, behavior change and physical disabilities, which can destroy their ability to quietly work, study or maintain relationships. Worse, brain injury dramatically increases the risk of developing destructive conditions in life, including Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and Stroke.
Without continuous research, education and community-based support, many remaining people will fall through only cracks. Eliminating the programs of federal brain injury will spoil these public health crises, while expecting people who need the most.
Brain Inzori Association of America Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy asks Junior to take a reverse course. We urge the Congress to reject these disastrous cuts in programs of brain injury.
Investing in brain injury services and research saves lives, saves money and increases the US promise for the care of its most weaker citizens. The US promised that decades ago, when it began creating an important network of programs present today. That promise should not be broken now. No, when so many lives and futures depend on it.
Rick Willis Brain is the President and CEO of the Association of America.
