By Shavantay Minnis
Not all wounds of war are visible. For veterans who suffer from mild traumatic brain injury (TBI), it’s a hidden battle that often limits their mental and
physical capabilities.
TBI can be caused by blunt force trauma or blow to the head or body said Cheryl Krause-Parello, a professor and interim associate dean for nursing, research and scholarship in FAU’s Christine E. Lynn College of Nursing, and member of the Stiles- Nicholson Brain Institute.
Krause-Parello created a platform giving veterans with a mild TBI and their caregivers a voice in developing a pathway for increasing relevance of patient-centered outcomes that are important to them so they can live their healthiest lives. This project is being executed through her newest community engagement award titled Mind Over Matter (MOM) funded through a $250,000 award from the Eugene Washington PCORI Engagement Awards program, an initiative of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute.
“TBI and its sequelae exhibit differently in different people, and there is no ‘one size fits all’ TBI treatment,” said Krause-Parello, who is also the director of Canines
Providing Assistance to Wounded Warriors and a faculty fellow of FAU’s Institute for Human Health and Disease Intervention.
Collaborators on the MOM project include veterans, caregivers, researchers, clinicians, TBI community advocacy organizations and others who have a connection to, expertise in, or lived experience related to dialogue on the four cognitive domains of TBI, including attention, memory sequencing, problem-solving and executive functioning. Once completed Krause-Parello, we will uncover meaningful veteran-centered research ideas and questions to create a roadmap to research on mild TBI, she said.
This method of patient-centered engagement is a familiar one to Krause-Parello. Her previous work with veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder also focused on working with them in the field to determine remedies for better health.
“It works, and that’s what encourages me to be engaged because I’m seeing firsthand how veterans partnering with researchers and key community stakeholders can make a difference in healthcare outcomes,” she said.