TBI Survivors Network: Craig Part Twenty Six
Craig tells us about how and why he started the TBI Survivors Network and how it has helped many traumatic brain injury survivors and continues to grow.
So TBI survivors network is something you started?
Correct.
Is TBI survivors network a non-profit, for profit?
501(c)(3) non-profit.
What is the mission of TBI Survivors Network?
It is to support any survivor that wants to create peer support.
So give me an overview of what the TBI Survivors Network currently consists of.
About 250 web sites for various groups. Pushing 500 groups that we support. Training for facilitators, training for, leadership opportunities. It’s working up our nation’s first 24/7 peer support line, that we’re hoping to launch very, very quickly. It consists of a lot of tie ins, like 2 on 1.
You see all of the web sites that we have made for folks, we’re integrated, so that resources stream right from the sites. It’s our own technology. It consists of prevention. We do a program and it’s called Hidden Epidemic.
I was lucky enough to meet a man named Bill Brown and he’s a film producer and he did a film about a kid that had a brain injury. When he was doing the film, he interviewed this kid three times and the kid kept trying to kill himself during the production of this movie.
During that time, Bill realized that his life was a living hell because he had a brain injury and he never recognized it until he met this kid. Again, Power of Peer Support and his son committed suicide, and he realized that his son had a brain injury. Just everything clicked when he met this kid and he went on to shoot the Hidden Epidemic. He is as passionate about concussion prevention, but not just in the pros, but the normal student. So we’ve kind of partnered, and we’ve got some amazing things going on, but
We do a training for SEIU.
SEIU?
It is the nation’s largest healthcare unit and I don’t know what it stands for, but they’re everywhere, 2.7 million employees. We are the only endorsed curriculum for that and as well as aging and long-term, we do it for anyone that will have it. We’ve done complete high schools, and so it’s a training that when you leave you, you get really what’s going on. Kids get it, started wearing helmets. It’s something that needs to happen in every school, but we’re just starting.
We started the Northwest Concussion Foundation and also the thrift gene testing in North Idaho, you know to check for the, the APOE4, gene. Dr. Amon is the one that’s really gung ho on that. Again Dr. Amon and some of the stuff he does I’ve been learning about.
All these things have just been clicking the last couple of years, and creating a network of resources and, and stuff that you can have access to, rather than the mystery that it is for so many people.
Next in Part Twenty Seven – Brain Injury Radio
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I would like to believe that you “support” many groups and websites but your “TBI” thing HAS TO GO!
What you are doing is being exclusive and not inclusive to people who live with brain injury. I have been advocating for well over 30 years now and we must ALL pull together, not separate out into silos.
Here is but one example: I am currently working with a “friend” who sustained a Brain Injury in an automobile accident. He was literally crushed by an on coming truck; his heart stopped, he went into a coma; he had multiple contusions, fractured skull, and his entire body was broken up.
Throughout the surgery they revived his heart (anoxic/hypoxic event), repaired internal organs and continued his coma (induced?) for a period of weeks. He was removed from the hospital intensive care and sent to a rehabilitation hospital. Yes, he sustained both an anoxic/hypoxic event and a “TBI”… yet not once was he ever evaluated for a brain injury… true story. We are just now getting him to proper treatment 5 years later.
My point is, we cannot label TBI as the definition of which keeps changing. Over the past 12 years the CDC has changed that the def’n three times. The American Psychological and Psychiatric Ass’n in conjunction with the U.S. Military and VA are yet again looking at a new definition. I believe that the finding will bring us closer to “just a brain injury with loss of mental – psychological functioning and capacity”.
Our friends who have sustained heart attacks, tumors, strokes, near drownings, accidental poisonings, inhalants, etc. will truly appreciate this as the symptoms and effects are all similar…
Please remember, there is no “T” in Brain Injury.
Regards
What now