Welcome Home - A Podcast for Veterans, About Veterans, By Veterans
Welcome Home is a Willing Warriors and the Warrior Retreat at Bull Run project. The program highlights activities at the Warrior Retreat and issues impacting all Veterans. For questions or feedback, please email us at podcast@willingwarriors.org.
Welcome Home - A Podcast for Veterans, About Veterans, By Veterans
Brain Injury Awareness Month: Understanding TBI and Its Impact
Brain injuries are more common than most of us realize, and this episode sheds light on the critical issue of traumatic brain injury (TBI) awareness. Join host Larry Zilliox, along with Donna Meltzer, CEO of Brain Injury Services, and Dr. Juliet Haarbauer-Krupa, adjunct faculty in the Department of Pediatrics, Emory School of Medicine, as they explore the far-reaching effects of TBIs on both children and adults. With insights into the varying types of brain injuries and the unique care programs available, this episode offers listeners valuable information on the significance of early intervention and the resources accessible to individuals affected by these injuries.
Tune in for a compelling discussion that emphasizes how critical it is to recognize the symptoms of brain injury and seek help. You'll learn about the vital work being done in the realm of brain health, including programs designed to support those living with TBIs and their families. As we delve into various narratives, we uncover the power of community support and the importance of raising awareness during Brain Injury Awareness Month. With an urgent call to action, we encourage listeners to take the necessary steps to educate themselves and get involved in helping others. Don't miss this important conversation that blends expertise with personal stories—tune in and help us spread the word about brain injuries and their impact on our lives.
Good morning. I'm your host, Larry Zilliox, Director of Culinary Services here at the Warrior Retreat at Bull Run, and this week our guests are Donna Meltzer. She's the CEO of Brain Injury Services. It's a nonprofit leader in developing community-based services addressing the needs of amazing people with traumatic brain injury, and they are based out of Springfield, Virginia. The Adapt Clubhouse, which is a really cool place that I had the good fortune of being there for the ribbon cutting recently, is in Fairfax. There is a Leesburg office in Leesburg, Virginia, a Fredericksburg office in Fredericksburg, Virginia and a Winchester office in you guessed it Winchester Virginia. And joining us by phone is Dr Juliet Haarbauer-Krupa. She's adjunct of faculty in the Department of Pediatrics at Emory School of Medicine. So welcome to both of you. I'm just so happy that you're here and this episode really is because of brain injury Awareness Month. Donna, welcome, and dr Julie, thanks for joining us well.
Donna Meltzer:Thank you so much, larry. It is it's an honor and a pleasure to be back here with you again yes, that's.
Larry Zilliox:One thing I should point out is that Donna is one of our very rare repeat guests, and I'm really happy to be able to do this episode because it's so important and it's an important issue for us here at the Warrior Retreat at Bull Run, and I'll talk a little bit about how we see traumatic brain injury manifest itself here with our warrior guests, and then we'll just talk a little bit about the different programs that Brain Injury Services hosts as well, as we'll get Dr Julie to talk about the issue as it relates to children too, which I think is the most important thing. But so, donna, tell us just a little bit about what Brain Injury Services does for the people of Northern Virginia.
Donna Meltzer:I'm happy to Larry. Thank you. So. Brain Injury Services is, as you mentioned before, a nonprofit organization. We are primarily funded through the Virginia State Legislature. That funding goes to the State Department of Aging and Rehabilitative Services and we have been around since 1989 and we are here to serve people with both acquired and traumatic brain injuries of all ages, all stages so could you explain the difference to our listeners between acquired and traumatic brain?
Donna Meltzer:yes, so we so we typically think of. I think most people are more familiar with traumatic brain injury. Right Especially in your work, larry, with Wounded Warriors. Right A blast to the head, a concussion, which I'd like to talk a bit more about today a fall, a car accident? You know. Day a fall, a car accident, you know when something has either landed on you or slammed into you or you have taken a dramatic fall.
Donna Meltzer:Acquired brain injury is typically through some kind of health incident. So, for example, a stroke is a really great example of acquired brain injury. So we serve all kinds of folks. The greatest thing, and what makes us so unique, is that we provide our services for free, again, because we are funded through the state government, through several county governments, as well as private donations and corporate entities, et cetera. We have some amazing folks on our team who really work to create this full portfolio of funding opportunities so that we can do everything that we want to do and need to do, because so many people, unfortunately, have brain injury. You know, as I said, it can happen at any time during life, and so we really work with families. We work to support children. You mentioned that. You know we care so much about kids who are growing up with brain injury, who may struggle at school, who may feel othered and really need that help along the way. And it's not just the child, of course. It impacts the entire family.
Donna Meltzer:So, we have a whole department that supports families. You know, something that I think is really incredible that we do is any of our staff in our pediatric department will go with the family to the school when they have a big meeting, an important discussion about their kid's education plan, their individualized education plan, an IEP as it's it's commonly known. It's really scary as a parent to go to a meeting like that on their own. Sometimes they might feel, you know, pushed to the side and the the folks from the school say, well, we know what your kid needs, but let's face it, the parent always knows what their kid needs, right, so we can be there to help, you know, ease that stress and make sure, from our very professional knowledge, that the family walks away feeling good about the conversation, that their child is getting what they need.
Donna Meltzer:We serve adults, we do case management, which means when people come to us, we're going to sit down and have this one-on-one conversation, just like you and I are having here today, to talk about what are their needs, what are their goals. Each of our clients actually designs their own goals. We are very person-focused, centered. You know. It's really about what every client needs, because no two people want or need the same thing in their recovery plan for their life. So we individualize everything and we work with that individual to meet their goals and to make the progress that they would like to make in their recovery journey.
Donna Meltzer:I certainly want to mention today, of course, while I'm sitting here at your place out here in Bull Run, that we serve veterans, we serve all veterans and we work in concert with the VA, so we're not taking the place of or pulling people away from getting their support after a brain injury through military service. We're here to support, maybe add-on, layer on extras that the veteran might not have gotten or just needs longer right, everybody's recovery journey is a different length of time. For some it might be fairly short, for others maybe a number of months or a couple of years, and for some it's forever. It is forever and it might involve the rest of the family as well, and so we are here to do that. We have a veterans case manager who is highly trained. She actually is from a military family herself, she's from Virginia, so she gets it, she knows it, she is deeply steeped in the language and the understanding, the unique needs of a military individual or family.
Larry Zilliox:So right there I would say to listeners if you're a veteran or you know a veteran that needs assistance with this issue and you've been considering the VA for that kind of help, what a lot of people don't understand is that while the VA looks close to us in DC, it's not close to us.
Larry Zilliox:When you talk about the time that it takes to get there, I personally go to West Virginia for my care because it's three times the distance but it's the same amount of time to get there and it's a prettier drive. So consider brain injury services as a possible replacement for the VA in this particular area, because this is a tough area. It's sort of a wasteland for VA services out here in the country of Western Prince William County and northwestern Virginia. So it's an option for you. So don't think that you have to find a ride to Martinsburg, west Virginia, or somebody who's willing to battle the traffic to get into DC. Brain Injury Services in your community Fairfax, winchester, fredericksburg is there to provide you with services and they will either supplement the VA or just you may want to check them out first that is really great.
Donna Meltzer:Thank you for for sharing that. But I also want your listeners to know a lot of our case management can be done virtually right having a conversation like we're having today. It can be done over zoom, it can be done in a phone call. So, while some of our programs or opportunities are in person, some of these basics that a veteran may need can be done out of their own home. We also have case managers who will go to the homes of those who need, so nobody should ever feel pressured to have to get to one of our locations.
Larry Zilliox:And that was sort of my next question, because when you talk about elderly veterans, many of them have mobility issues and transportation can be an issue as well. I think it would be extremely valuable for family members or veterans who have buddies that may need some assistance to say hey, can you come to the house and evaluate grandpa? And is this traumatic brain injury or is this something else? Is this Alzheimer's or is this? What is this? And that's amazing.
Donna Meltzer:So one thing I do want to note is we're not there to do diagnosis, but we will come evaluate if the individual says my doctor has said I have brain injury. It doesn't necessarily need to be service connected.
Larry Zilliox:Right.
Donna Meltzer:As long as the individual was in the military, any branch of the military, any era of the military Right. We're not just serving those who have recently come out or those long ago, it does not matter. Ok serving those who have recently come out or those long ago, it does not matter. But you need a diagnosis of brain injury for us to be able to document and serve.
Larry Zilliox:Okay, good, that clears that up. Let me ask Dr Julie a question. Sure, and since you specialize in pediatrics, if you would could you tell us about, from a clinical standpoint, how TBI manifests itself in a child, a four-year-old as opposed to a 40-year-old?
Dr. Juliet Haarbauer-Krupa:That's a great question and thank you. So, preschoolers? So when I started in the field 40 years ago, there was zero research on kids and everybody used to say, oh, their brains will be fine because they're young. And what we've learned over time? That even with a mild brain injury, kids can have long term effects because it affects how the brain works and it can also impact their development. So in that way kids are very different than adults because they're in the process of development and injuries start as infants. They can start having an injury then and over time have more than one. So yes, it's very different for kids than adults.
Larry Zilliox:Yeah, they're not just small people and in young children.
Dr. Juliet Haarbauer-Krupa:yes, that's a good point. And then kids younger than five yes, that's a good point. And then kids younger than five. Recent research, including some I've done, has shown that symptoms may be different their child's having a headache at four. They may observe their personality changes, their increased crying. They're having increased meltdowns. They're not eating as much and they might have been toilet trained and that might have changed. So young kids have different symptoms than even older kids and adults because we're observing them. They're not necessarily reporting them.
Larry Zilliox:Just so our listeners are clear when we talk about pediatrics, it's not just young children. Pediatrics covers up to age 21,. I believe.
Donna Meltzer:In our definition at Brain Injury Services.
Larry Zilliox:It goes through college, oh okay, all right. At brain injury services. It goes through college, oh okay, all right. So I'm guessing that a lot of your work is around concussive injuries based on sports.
Dr. Juliet Haarbauer-Krupa:True, that's a great point. Sports are one of the and thank goodness to the sports community for bringing this all into the foreground. Sports is a common mechanism of TBI, but it mostly starts when kids are a little older, like when they're 9, 10, and they're starting to participate in sports more and the sports are more competitive, and especially in high school that is. The highest number of injuries in high school is sports and motor vehicle crashes. With young kids it's mostly falls.
Larry Zilliox:And the concussive injuries very similar to what we see here at the warrior retreat. Many of our warriors suffer from TBI. We actually train our staff, our guest stay coordinators. They're volunteers but part of their training is to recognize TBI symptoms the biggest one and the way we encourage them to contact the warrior and talk about their upcoming stay. But then we also encourage them to contact the warrior again three days later and discuss what they discussed, because very, very often because of the TBI, they have no memory of their conversation and before they go lining up all sorts of things that the warrior won't remember, they kind of gently ask maybe I can talk to your spouse or your you know significant other caregiver, whatever.
Larry Zilliox:So that's one of the ways we see it manifest itself here and we recognize that for our guests, when you see somebody who's a below the knee amputee, you are also looking at somebody who has TBI and post-traumatic stress. So rarely do you do. Our guests come with just one issue, and I think that can also be true in a community when, donna, you're dealing with a person who was in an auto accident and maybe a near-death experience. Now you're talking about TBI but also PTS, you know, I just think the concussive injuries and the blast injuries that we see warriors with are so similar to what you deal with in sports and in auto accidents. So, donna, what percentage of your guests are auto accidents or sports related, or how does it break down for you?
Donna Meltzer:That's a great question. I would say majority of what we see are either auto accidents or false, as Julie mentioned. But I want to take a step back for a moment, just share a little story. We have a program at Brain Injury Services that we call the Human Library Project. It's very unique and it's absolutely fascinating and it's changing the breadth and scope of knowledge of the average person about what brain injury is. As you could probably guess by its title, we are actually using humans, people who have brain injury, to almost be like a book. So it's a two-pronged approach in this program approach in this program Number one they're working with professionals to learn how to tell their story, create it in writing and learn how to express it orally as well.
Donna Meltzer:And then we do these events where other people from the community can come to our library I'm putting that in air quotes from those who can't see that and check out a book, which means you come and you sit with this individual for a while and hear their story. The reason I'm sharing this is because I went to a fairly recent human library event and I checked out a book of my own. My book was a woman who at this point is in her mid to late 60s. As a child she had her first brain injury when she was, if my memory's correct, around 10. Or it might have been five, and her second one was at 10.
Donna Meltzer:She had two. The first was she was playing with her friends. She lived kind of in a rural area. She fell out of a tree and back then nobody knew. We didn't know TBI, we didn't really talk about concussion, she didn't know what was wrong and her parents didn't even necessarily think it was important to take her to see a doctor because that was going to cost them money and it might be an embarrassment or you know something about the reputation.
Donna Meltzer:So this poor child suffered for much of her life.
Donna Meltzer:It wasn't until she was an adult that she learned really she had had a major concussion, ended up, as I said, having two, and to that point, about crossover.
Donna Meltzer:It wasn't just a head injury, but it impacted everything about her life how she felt about herself, her struggle with memory issues, her ability to do well in school, her ability to hold down relationships and to really share about herself. It wasn't until she found brain injury services as an older adult that she really understood terminology, about what this was, that she could understand the roots, the genesis of what she was going through, and that she wasn't alone. And that she now has coping mechanisms and can really look at her life very differently. And she is repairing relationships from the past and learning how to forgive her parents who just didn't know better. Right Today, you know, as we were talking about pediatrics and the fact that we look at pediatrics as all the way up through college, it's because we do know better. We know that the earlier we can repair something and gives an individual the tools and the skills to learn what they need to learn to be successful in this world, the better off they will be.
Larry Zilliox:Dr Julie, can you tell us a little bit about the research that you all are doing there at Emory and the work that your department does?
Dr. Juliet Haarbauer-Krupa:Oh, thank you. Well, my field. I've always been interested in young children because I had a federal longitudinal study of children's where we were studying kids who were injured before age five, but they were in early elementary school and it was mind blowing. First of all, many parents came to us whose children had a concussion or a mild injury because they said nobody was listening to them, and then we learned that these kids actually test within normal limits. That's one of the issues with kids.
Dr. Juliet Haarbauer-Krupa:This is an unexpected event and parents don't always understand what to do, whether to take them to get care, as Donna mentioned, or not. In the early years they would just say, okay, you'll be fine if they had a mild injury. But now we're really encouraging parents to really at least take them to their pediatrician or somewhere to get them evaluated, because it can really impact them. So I've done work on outcomes, I've done work on overall the theories about brain injury, and children are different from adults because they have two models of care. They have the healthcare setting and the school setting, and all kids are in school somewhere. And so what I've learned from talking with educators over time is kids might come back and their behavior has totally changed, but they weren't told they had a brain injury.
Dr. Juliet Haarbauer-Krupa:They'll ask the parents. Some schools now have something called a guided credible history where if the parent, if they ask the parent, and the parent says, oh yeah, my child hit their head but we didn't get, they can still take care of them at school because they've changed their requirements. But most schools require a medical diagnosis and to qualify for school services you need to not test. Well, you know that's part of the reason why it's hard to serve children. So over time we have learned that A this early childhood or any injury in childhood can really affect the kids, in part because imaging has advanced. It showed us that. You know, their brains look different and if a child has an injury at a young age, as Donna mentioned, they could have multiple injuries over time, like that story Donna told us.
Dr. Juliet Haarbauer-Krupa:Nobody knew at 10 what to do or realized it, and you know she probably had a few. She might have had a few more. But also what we've learned too is past and current health history means something. So if you have a concussion and let's say you had a learning disorder, you might have more issues than if you did not. Or if you had a developmental delay or hearing problems or ADHD, you might have more effects because of them and there's heterogeneity in outcomes due to many factors in kids the injury, what happened, as Donna mentioned some kinds of injury types like abusive head trauma or if somebody was affected by violence. That's going to add to the issue, in addition to the child's past and current health history and the child's environment.
Dr. Juliet Haarbauer-Krupa:So if a child lives in rural areas, they may not get care, if parents don't have insurance or they don't have the means to pay for care a child may not get care, or we've also learned that sometimes parents don't realize there's effects of those things killed and I think that's part of the story that we really need to educate everyone overall that if you hit your head, here's what to watch for and here's what to do.
Larry Zilliox:So I want to just take a moment to point our listeners towards the Brain Injury Services webpage, because you're going to find a tremendous amount of resources Services webpage. Because you're going to find a tremendous amount of resources. It's just, it's your first starting place really when you think you have an issue or you have a friend or relative who may have an issue, but it's braininjurysvcsorg, so braininjurysvcsorg. So go there, take a look, find resources, reach out if you're not sure. And what I always tell our listeners is, when you go to a webpage for an organization that offers services, look it over and then contact the organization.
Larry Zilliox:Don't make assumptions based on what you see, because most of the time you're going to be wrong. You're going to think, oh, I didn't see that service, so they don't offer it. When they do, or once they understand your situation, these are trained professionals who can make recommendations for a treatment protocol or some sort of case management that you hadn't even thought of. Don't just assume anything. Look it over, get an understanding of the organization. You can trust the organization, I guarantee that. But reach out to them and say here's my situation, what do you think? Can you help me? And straight up. If they can't help you. They will tell you they can't help you and then they'll find some other resources for you.
Larry Zilliox:They'll say you know what, you might be better off with the VA if you're a veteran or you don't live in Virginia. You know, thanks for looking at our webpage, but you don't live in Virginia. You live in Iowa. But maybe there's a similar organization in Iowa and I'm sure Donna is just hooked up with all these brain injury people around the country and the world. So don't give up. Make sure you reach out. For sure, donna, you guys have a webinar coming up. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about that?
Donna Meltzer:I would be delighted to Thank you. So, as you mentioned at the beginning of our conversation, today it's Brain Injury Awareness Month. I want to go back briefly. A year ago at this time, as we were preparing for brain injury awareness month, we did a little poll that we sent out to over 300 northern virginias just to get a little information from folks about what do they know about brain injury and what don't they know. And one of the facts that really struck us was how little people knew or understood concussion and related concussion as brain injury. Right, julie made that point.
Donna Meltzer:Brain injury is excuse me, concussion is brain injury, and so we have spent a lot of time this year focusing in on concussion. 50% of people with brain injuries don't get it checked out, because often what they hear is oh, you had a concussion, you're OK, maybe take a day or two off. You know school protocols are different depending on what school system you're in. Some will tell you go see your doctor or take your kid to the pediatrician. Others will just say rest for a while and you'll be fine, but it's really important to see a medical professional because, none of us can see inside that brain and know exactly what is going on.
Donna Meltzer:So we've been studying this.
Donna Meltzer:We've been talking with a whole lot of specialists and very highly educated people like Julie, like Dr Greg O'Shanick from Richmond, virginia, who have expertise around concussion.
Donna Meltzer:In September, we did what we called a concussion summit, where we brought together a group of professionals from a variety of different parts of society right so, employers, educators, people in the sports community, physicians, people who are in technology and we had this amazing half-day conversation. We had a great panel Julie was part of that where our experts got to talk about what they know about concussion. And then we had some deeper conversation and what we're doing this year in March, on March 25th at 9 am Eastern Time, we're going to be releasing our report through a webinar format of what we've learned over this past year. Julie will be part of that, dr Greg O'Shanick, who I mentioned, will be part of that along with myself, and so we do encourage all of the listeners here to join us for that event. So some of it will be us sharing some of the information we've learned, and then there will be opportunity for questions and answers as well.
Larry Zilliox:So I've registered for that. It's pretty painless. You put your name in your email address and boom, you're there.
Donna Meltzer:Boom, you're there.
Larry Zilliox:So definitely go to the webpage. You'll find it there. I think it's under events, right, so you know, click on that. Dr Julia, one question for you what is your take on the current state of research done by federally supported universities, private organizations today, especially when it comes to concussive injuries, whether they're in children, in auto accidents, in sports or whether they're involving veterans and their service? So what do you think the state of research is?
Dr. Juliet Haarbauer-Krupa:Well, first of all, what I've been pleased about over the years is there's multiple areas of research. There's research on kids, on adults, on service members. There's research on biomarkers. People are looking more into the brain, physiology and what a head injury can do, and they're also looking at the effects. There have been even some papers although we can't study kids clear to adulthood, that's too expensive but people will write a paper about individuals who had a childhood history they're now adults and how it's impacting them. So the state of the research has been unbelievable because it's expanded so much. It covers concussion and mild injury. It covers severe injury, disorders of consciousness. There's so much out there right now. Now some of it's been put on hold for a month or so, but I'm hoping that it opens up and continues.
Larry Zilliox:Donna, what can our listeners do to support brain injury services as far as from a funding standpoint? Now, normally I tell them to go click on a donate button and give five bucks. But who can they reach out to on a state level here in the Commonwealth and say we know that there might be funding issues from the federal government to the state as far as transferring funds, but when all said and done, brain injury services needs to be funded. This is too important to just sort of push to the side. So what do you recommend our listeners do who want to help you continue to do the amazing work that you do?
Donna Meltzer:thank you so much for for opening up that conversation. We are not federally funded, so we are fortunately at this moment, while, as Julie said, some grants are on hold.
Larry Zilliox:We don't have that direct impact, but I'm guessing some of that money comes from the feds to the state so our money is from the state, but you're right in that there's always going to be a trickle down. Yeah.
Donna Meltzer:Right. It's going to hit us in numerous ways, some that we can't even anticipate quite yet. I will say that I have a very strong feeling that where we will see some impacts is from our county grants. Fairfax County is one of our largest funders. They're going to be struggling in numerous ways either. Because they have federal grants, For example, they run some amazing programs that support people with all kinds of disabilities, including brain injury, to get a leg up on employment. A lot of people with disabilities struggle to get into good, meaningful employment opportunities.
Larry Zilliox:Sure.
Donna Meltzer:And they have some very strong programs in Fairfax County that they've met with us about. They want to see our folks with brain injury enter those programs. Those are federally funded programs, so we're waiting to find out if they're still in existence or if their funding has been cut, so we'll feel some of that trickle down, if you will.
Donna Meltzer:Fortunately for us, as I said, most of our programs are not currently impacted. In fact, we have just finished doing our advocacy work at the Statehouse in Richmond and we got very good news this past week that the General Assembly has approved Now the governor has not yet signed the bill, but we anticipate he will that we have been approved for some increases to support our staff so that our staff, who are relatively low paid, can get at least a small bump up, because all costs are going up right Every nonprofit, every nonprofit. So we're happy about that and we've gotten some expansion money as well. One of the unique things about the state of Virginia is we are one of the only states in the nation that has brain injury service provider agencies across the state. Some have none. District of Columbia has nothing. Maryland has a brain injury Association of Maryland, but they're kind of up in Baltimore so they're not able to provide the kind of supports we do yeah and with funding support a year ago we were able to cover every inch of Virginia.
Donna Meltzer:So every single person in Virginia who has a brain injury has an opportunity to be served. So we are getting a little bit more expansion money so we can maybe grow our staff. So, for example, where we are really in need of increasing our staff capacity, this is not going to shock you mental health services. Sure Right.
Larry Zilliox:Yeah.
Donna Meltzer:We have waiting lists, so we are very excited about that, but it doesn't mean that we're just fine and dandy. Sure, we need more help. We recently had an annual campaign. We have Giving Tuesday. We have, if you feel so compelled that you want to say, brain Injury Awareness Month is a great time for me to make a donation. Please do so. You can do it very easily through our website. If you struggle to find the right way or time or place to do that, give me a call or call Andrew Walensky, who is our Director of Development. We have so many different ways throughout the year for individuals to give, and it's not just dollars. If you would prefer to give some of your time in a particular way, let us know that we can utilize volunteers. We are always in need of a variety of kinds of supports that can be helpful.
Donna Meltzer:So, it's not just dollars. We like people who care about brain injury to join us in learning more about what it means and how to advocate for our funding for programs, for all these other things that help us do what we do. So please take a look at our website. If it's not leaping out at you as to what they're, the right path is for you, just give us a call and we'll we'll have a conversation and guide you through and so the website again is braininjurysvcsorg and it's Brain Injury Awareness Month this month.
Larry Zilliox:So share that webpage on your social media. Please Send it out to everybody you know. Listen, the folks that they see over there at Brain Injury Services, the wounded warriors that we host here at the Retreat many of their injuries came to them in a second. Their life changed, their family's life changed in just a second. So you might think this isn't for me, I don't know anybody, but you need to familiarize yourself with this issue, these resources, and promote the work that they do, because things can change for you or someone you love or know a relative, a friend in an instant. You love or know a relative, a friend, in an instant, and that is not the time to try and figure out what's going on.
Larry Zilliox:So, for sure, check out the webpage and spread the word. This is Brain Injury Awareness Month and that's why we're doing this episode and that's why we want all of our listeners to get the word out. We're over. We don't usually go this long, but this has been fascinating. And, dr Julie, I just have one last question for you and I asked this of a number of guests, but considering, thinking about the work that you do, how?
Donna Meltzer:do you?
Larry Zilliox:think that artificial intelligence and AI is going to impact the work that you do.
Dr. Juliet Haarbauer-Krupa:Oh, that's a great question and that's really up for debate right now. Right, I think some physicians are using it to help verify, you know, diagnosis. I've seen that done, but I'm hoping it doesn't take over for healthcare providers and diagnosis, but that it assists them and that's what I've seen people using right now something to assist them. So hopefully it will assist but not take over for healthcare.
Larry Zilliox:Yeah, I know that UVA was involved in a recent study of their physicians and I think their diagnosis were about 69% of them were better when they were using AI as a supplement to their own knowledge and clearly I think that's just, that's great and I'm happy to hear that from you because I think I'd hate to see people resist using it really. I also want to direct our listeners to a previous episode that I did with Dr Stone from UVA, who's doing research on blast injuries small blast injuries over a short period of time. So where a lot of times people think of soldiers being in close proximity to large explosions, it turns out that during their study they found that explosive ordnance disposal instructors who were subject to a series of small explosions during the time that they're instructing other soldiers, that they actually had more of an impact on their brain than those soldiers who were just one-off large explosions here and there. So it's a great episode. It was last season, season two, you can look it up.
Larry Zilliox:I just really wanted to kind of wind up here and say thank you to you both. Dr Julie, thank you for the work that you do. It's amazing because it's so important, especially with kids and pediatrics, because it really does change the trajectory of their life if they suffer this sort of injury and it's unattended and it really can impact so many people. So thank you very much for everything that you do.
Dr. Juliet Haarbauer-Krupa:Oh, thank you, and I want to make a special comment of support for what Donna does, and the Brain Injury Services of Virginia is a very unique state-run agency or nonprofit. And, donna, thank you, you're doing great work. Thank you.
Larry Zilliox:So, donna, yeah, thanks for coming out and joining us again as a repeat customer.
Donna Meltzer:Well, I'm honored and it's always a pleasure If I can just say one thing as well. You know, as we've, we talked about spending this year really looking at concussion. It's for. The message for everybody is if you or someone you know has had a fall, a car accident, bumped their head on a beam, whatever it might be, don't just say I think I'll be okay, go get it checked out.
Larry Zilliox:Yeah, yeah. Get medical support so important, yep. And so here we are Brain Injury Awareness Month. Get the word out, spread the word. Thanks for listening. We really appreciate it For our listeners. We will have another episode next Monday morning. If you have any questions or suggestions, you can reach us at podcast at willingwarriorsorg. Until next week. Thanks for listening.
