The independent source for health policy research, polling, and news.
MILLVILLE, Pa. — In an open field, arrows whizzed through the humid June air and struck their targets. Campers and counselors cheered.
It was archery hour at Camp Cranium. Operations director Drew Meyer watched, a few tears escaping from behind his dark sunglasses.
This article is from a partnership that includes WVIA, NPR, and KFF Health News. It can be republished for free.
“They will surprise you, like, flat out,” he said of the campers, who have all survived brain injuries. “They’ll come out here, and they’ll shoot for three hours and start hitting the target.”
Campers, ranging in age from 10 to 21, have been coming to Camp Cranium in Pennsylvania’s rural Columbia County since 2008. Some of their brain injuries are so severe that they have to relearn basics, from talking to tying their shoelaces. Some use wheelchairs or crutches. But during a week at camp, they climb rock walls, swim, and whiz down a zip line through the lush forest.
The existence of Camp Cranium, and a handful of others like it, is a response to a decades-long national trend: More people, including children, now survive crises resulting in brain injury than did in the 1980s. The improvements in survival are largely due to seat belt laws and federal investments in research and trauma centers that can treat injuries quickly.
But recently, efforts to track and prevent one type of brain injury, traumatic ones, are in flux after Congress didn’t renew a law to further research and prevention of traumatic brain injuries, and the Trump administration fired hundreds of employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, including the team tracking traumatic brain injuries, or TBIs.
“Brain injury can happen to anybody,” said Rebeccah Wolfkiel, executive director of the National Association of State Head Injury Administrators. “This community deserves more.”
Lucas Hardy, 14, smiled at the encouraging crowd below. In a shady clearing in the woods, he climbed the 30-foot rock wall, aided by a hoist that pulled him out of his wheelchair and helped support his moves. Hardy suffered a traumatic brain injury at age 3, when a tree branch fell on him at a birthday party.
Annually, an estimated 2.8 million Americans experience a TBI — including about 475,000 children, according to the Brain Injury Association of America.
Recent data suggests those are undercounts. In 2018, a CDC team piloted a household survey asking about TBIs in a sample of U.S. children and adults. The results informed a study concluding that such injuries, which are often considered “hidden” because the damage is internal and unseen, are more widespread than hospitalization numbers suggest.
The mass firings at the CDC in early 2025 gutted the team studying TBI, right before they were expected to launch a nationwide concussion surveillance system. A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, Emily Hilliard, did not respond to questions about the number of employees terminated, or if they were reinstated or replaced.
In a statement, she 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.
