BrainLine is an ambitious national multimedia project offering information and resources about preventing, treating and living with traumatic brain injury (TBI). A service of WETA, the flagship public broadcasting service in Washington D.C., BrainLine includes a series of webcasts, an electronic newsletter, and an extensive outreach campaign in partnership with national organizations concerned about traumatic brain injury.
Every 19 seconds someone in the United States sustains a traumatic brain injury (TBI). That adds up to 1.7 million people each year. Brain injuries range from mild to moderate to severe. Every injury is different, but when your brain is injured, it can affect everything: your ability to speak, focus, remember and relate to other people.
According to BrainLine Military, a service of Brainline.org, brain injury has become the signature wound of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Because wartime TBIs can be associated with a psychological wound — post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) — the diagnosis and treatment of service members and veterans with brain injury has become even more of a major challenge for the military and for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). In the military from 2000 through 2012, more than 266,000 service members sustained a TBI. BrainLineMilitary.org provides military-specific information and resources on traumatic brain injury to veterans; service members in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, National Guard, and Reserve; and their families.
A 2016 RAND study, the first to examine the Mild TBI (mTBI) care of a census of patients in the Military Health System, assessed the number and characteristics (including deployment history and history of TBI) of nondeployed, active-duty service members who received an mTBI diagnosis in 2012, the locations of their diagnoses and next health care visits, the types of care they received in the six months following their mTBI diagnosis, co-occurring conditions, and the duration of their treatment. A few of their key findings found that service members who received treatment for a new mTBI diagnosis in 2012 tended to be young and junior enlisted and many service members with a new mTBI diagnosis also received treatment for co-occurring behavioral health conditions, pain, and sleep disorders.
BrainLine serves anyone whose life has been affected by TBI. That includes people with brain injury, their families, professionals in the field and anyone else in a position to help prevent or ameliorate the toll of TBI.
For more information regarding BrainLine, visit their website.