Home > Our Work > Heads Up: Brain Injury in Your Practice Tool Kit

Challenge: Every year, approximately 1.5 million Americans suffer traumatic brain injuries. Many are released from medical care without hospitalization, and some do not receive medical care at all. Due to this public health need for physicians to quickly diagnose, properly treat, and carefully monitor patients with mild traumatic brain injury (TBI), CDC’s National Center on Injury Prevention and Control asked AED to help raise awareness of the prevalence and health consequences of mild TBI, foster better treatment and follow-up care of patients with mild TBI, and equip health care providers with tools that enable them to inform their patients and patients’ families about mild TBI and available community resources and services for the patient.

Solution: AED first convened an expert panel that included high-ranking officials, researchers, and other experts from the CDC, as well as representatives from top medical facilities and brain injury associations. These experts, in conjunction with additional formative research, helped to fine-tune the strategy and materials to ensure that the final product would be relevant, useful, and easy to use in practice settings.

The end result was a tool kit of educational materials for physicians and their patients and families/caregivers. The kit included a guide for physicians, a physician’s pocket card for easy reference, patient education materials in English and Spanish, and a CD-ROM with downloadable scientific literature and the tool kit materials.

AED forged a strong partnership network with nationally recognized medical, nonprofit, and government organizations that could help in promoting and disseminating the completed kit to physicians around the country. Partner groups welcomed the opportunity to associate with the CDC in this effort, and the CDC further strengthened partnerships and helped to build credibility for the kit by acknowledging the participation of all partners in the materials.

Results: An intensive promotional effort was launched to coincide with the CDC press announcement of the kit’s availability. During the first few months of the kit’s availability, the CDC received thousands of reorders and requests for new kits through returned reorder forms, faxes, and emails.

AED also worked with American College of Physicians-American Society of Internal Medicine to develop an evaluation of the kit. Comments from Heads Up users were overwhelmingly positive; the kit garnered accolades from a wide range of health professionals—including nurses, physician assistants, health educators, and community outreach specialists – in addition to doctors.

> Download the Heads Up project fact sheet (254 KB, PDF)

To learn more about these and other CHC programs, contact us.