BIAA Requests Meeting with HHS Secretary After Leaked Budget Draft Proposes Cuts to Brain Injury Programs

The Brain Injury Association of America (BIAA) has sent an open letter to the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to request a meeting to discuss the proposed elimination, restructuring, and funding cuts of critical brain injury programs within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Read the full letter here.

Last week, a leaked HHS budget draft showed that the current administration seeks to deeply slash budgets for federal health programs by cutting discretionary spending for HHS by approximately one-third. Among the proposed cuts are several critical brain injury programs within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), including:

• The CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, the federal government’s only entity solely focused on reducing injuries
• The CDC’s HEADS UP initiative, a cornerstone of concussion education and prevention
• The CDC’s Core State Injury Prevention Program, which supports TBI surveillance, funds local prevention efforts, trains frontline responders, and connects EMS, hospitals, schools, and Medicaid
• The CDC’s National Concussion Surveillance System, the only ongoing federal system tracking the incidence of concussion and brain injury across age groups

The leaked draft also proposes eliminating the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR), the nation’s leading source of brain injury rehabilitation research, assistive technology innovation, and return-to-work program development which funds the TBI Model Systems, a network of 16 centers that provide cutting-edge rehabilitation and conduct the nation’s only long-term studies on moderate to severe TBI outcomes.

How Can You Help?

We won’t sugarcoat this: Secretary Kennedy’s proposed funding cuts would be devastating for the brain injury community, rolling back decades of progress America has made towards treatment and prevention of brain injury, and abandoning the people who rely on these programs. We need all hands on deck as we advocate for these critical programs to remain funded:

1. Flood HHS Secretary Kennedy’s Mentions: Add your voice to BIAA’s on Twitter/X, Facebook, and LinkedIn, and urge HHS Secretary Kennedy to meet with us as we work to protect critical services, programs, and research.
2. Urge Your House Rep. to Sign Appropriations Letter: Contact your House Rep. and urge them to sign onto the bipartisan Luttrell-Deluzio Appropriations Letter, which calls on Congress to protect and sustain funding for vital brain injury programs in the upcoming federal budget.

Brain injury doesn’t have an end date. Neither should federal funding.