Traumatic Brain Injury
Despite the fact that the incidence rate of
identified Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBI’s) in Alaska
is 28% higher than the national rate, little has been done to address
and treat the cognitive, emotional, and behavioral manifestations
of a traumatic brain injury in the affected population. The Division
of Behavioral Health is currently working to remedy this through the
development of an infrastructure system that provides for the culturally
competent treatment and rehabilitation services specific to TBI survivors
who experience cognitive, emotional, and behavioral manifestations
as a result of head trauma.
The mission of the Division of Behavioral Health’s
Traumatic Brain Injury Project is to develop and maintain
an infrastructure that provides a service delivery system capable
of meeting the cognitive, emotional, and behavioral treatment needs
of TBI survivors throughout the state of Alaska.
To meet this mission (8) primary goals have been established
to address TBI throughout the state of Alaska:
1. Expand and improve state-level and community-based
capacity for providing access to comprehensive, high quality, culturally
competent and coordinated services for individuals with TBI and
their families statewide.
2. Enhance community-based capacity for identifying
adults and children with TBI.
3. Use existing research-based knowledge, state-of-the-art
systems development approaches, and best practices to enhance community-based
skills and competence in identifying adults and children with TBI
and providing TBI screening, assessment, treatment, and rehabilitation
services.
4. Establish on-going capacity to sustain the incorporation
of culturally competent TBI services within Alaska’s service
delivery system.
5. Determine if Alaska has sufficient need to develop
in-state post-acute residential rehabilitation capacity to serve
the medically stable individual with TBI, or if included with other
types of brain injury.
6. Establish on-going capacity of the Alaska TBI
Advisory Board, survivors, and their families to sustain their oversight
of statewide planning for culturally competent TBI services/supports
within Alaska’s service delivery system.
7. Continue and expand the efforts to prevent traumatic
brain injury in Alaska.
8. Provide data support for the implementation
of services described in the implementation grant.
Alaska’s Traumatic Brain Injury Project is currently
funded through a three-year grant from the US Department
of Health and Human Services’ Health Resource and Services Administration.