TBI Act lapses and CDC team tracking brain injuries is fired

Camp Cranium and peer nonprofits serve brain injury survivors on private donations

At Camp Cranium in Millville, in rural Pennsylvania’s Columbia County, children and young adults shoot arrows across an open field, climb a 30-foot rock wall and whiz down a zip line through the forest during a week each June. The campers, who range in age from 10 to 21, have all survived brain injuries. Some are so severely affected that they have had to relearn basics from talking to tying their shoelaces; some use wheelchairs or crutches. The camp has operated since 2008. A handful of similar programs exist, including Bright Ideas TBI Camp in Alabama.

Annually, an estimated 2.8 million Americans experience a traumatic brain injury, including about 475,000 children, according to the Brain Injury Association of America. Improvements in survival are largely due to seat belt laws and federal investments in research and trauma centers that can treat injuries quickly. More people, including children, now survive crises that produce brain injury than did in the 1980s.

Efforts to track and prevent those injuries are in flux. The 1996 Traumatic Brain Injury Act, which has provided many states with grants for TBI research, advocacy and services, has remained lapsed since 2024. Congress had reauthorized the act four times, largely with bipartisan support, before the lapse. In early 2025, the Trump administration fired hundreds of employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, including the team tracking traumatic brain injuries, right before that team was expected to launch a nationwide concussion surveillance system.

A 2018 CDC team piloted a household survey asking about TBIs in a sample of U.S. children and adults, and the results informed a study concluding that such injuries — often considered “hidden” because the damage is internal and unseen — are more widespread than hospitalization numbers suggest.

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, Emily Hilliard, did not respond to questions about the number of CDC employees terminated or whether they were reinstated or replaced. In a statement, Hilliard said: “The Trump Administration remains committed to supporting efforts to prevent traumatic brain injuries, improve surveillance, and ensure Americans have access to practical, evidence-based information that can help protect their health and safety.” She said the agency’s TBI work is now handled by other staff members at the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.

Hilliard said the CDC is deciding how to establish a cost-effective national concussion surveillance system within the bounds of current funding, and said the agency in 2026 dedicated funds to an educational campaign about concussions, an injury prevention program and concussion surveillance.

“The lack of resources and programs and information that’s out there is really just sort of appalling,” said Rebeccah Wolfkiel, executive director of the National Association of State Head Injury Administrators. Wolfkiel said she worries about how the CDC firings and the impasse over federal funding will affect brain injury research and prevention efforts in the long term. “Brain injury can happen to anybody,” she said. “This community deserves more.”

“The TBI Act is the only piece of federal funding for traumatic brain injury at the federal level,” said Rick Willis, president and CEO of the Brain Injury Association of America. “We’re aiming to preserve what we have.” Congress did appropriate $8.25 million for TBI program activities through the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2026, but that is far less than the typical funding from the TBI Act. The last time Congress reauthorized the act, it provided $23 million a year from 2020 to 2024 — half for the CDC’s concussion research and half for grants to state programs.

The federal funding uncertainty has not affected Camp Cranium and the handful of other brain injury camps, because they are nonprofits that mostly rely on private donations.

Tony Sadowski, the camp’s executive director, learned of the program when a speech therapist recommended it after his son Bryan suffered a brain bleed that caused a hemorrhagic stroke at age 6. “You’re in the emergency room,” Sadowski recalled, “not knowing what version of your son’s going to wake up.” Now 18, Bryan has attended the camp for years and is preparing to study occupational therapy at Elizabethtown College.

Lucas Hardy, 14, sustained a traumatic brain injury at age 3 when a tree branch fell on him at a birthday party. At camp, in a shady clearing in the woods, he climbed the rock wall aided by a hoist that pulled him out of his wheelchair and helped support his moves. Operations director Drew Meyer watched from behind dark sunglasses, a few tears escaping. “They will surprise you, like, flat out,” Meyer said of the campers. “They’ll come out here, and they’ll shoot for three hours and start hitting the target.”

Brianna Engleman, now 21, lives in Northern Virginia and first attended Camp Cranium as a teen in 2018. When she was 5, doctors performed a hemispherectomy to relieve debilitating seizures — surgery that itself can injure other parts of the brain. The camp was her first time being around so many people like her, Engleman said. “I’ve gotten more confident,” she said. “It made me think, well, there’s actually good people out there.” She plans to return as a counselor.

Markwayne Mullin, now Trump’s secretary of homeland security, supported reauthorizing TBI funding when he was a senator. Congress is still considering whether to reauthorize the funding through 2030.