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Brain injury center planned for Bethesda

A “traumatic brain injury center of excellence” for wounded troops, funded by private donations and to be built on the grounds of the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., is in the planning stages.

It will be similar in concept to the Center for the Intrepid, a $40 million, state-of-the-art physical rehabilitation facility at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio that opened Jan. 29. The cost could range from $50 million to $70 million, said Bill White, president of the Intrepid Foundation.

“This is different. This is brain stuff. The scale is much more significant in terms of what is needed from a technological standpoint,” White said. Like the Center for the Intrepid, the new facility will be funded by private donations. Some 600,000 donors contributed to build and equip the $40 million center.

White said Arnold Fisher, founder of the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund, is working closely on the concept with S. Ward Casscells, assistant secretary of defense for health affairs. More details will be available soon, he said.

“If this is anything like the last project, it will be expedited and built much quicker than any government entity could build it,” White said.

The Fisher family, a leader in New York City real estate, is best known to military families for building and donating Fisher House comfort homes to lodge families at low or no cost near military and VA medical facilities.

White said the vision for the new project is that “when you go through the center of excellence, we’ll keep an imaginary string tied to you,” to make sure service members and veterans are getting the needed treatment. “We’ll keep in touch with doctors, so that if you need to come back, we’ll bring you back.”

An estimated 30 percent of troops who served in Iraq or Afghanistan have had some non-penetrating form of brain injury, he said. Concussions are common as a result of the ubiquitous roadside bombs that have injure and killed more U.S. troops in Iraq than any other cause. The injuries can be difficult to diagnose and treat because there are no visible wounds or symptoms.

“It’s the [injuries] we don’t know about that I’m most concerned about,” he said.

Helping those with traumatic brain injury “is where the country has to focus its efforts,” he said, to help veterans avoid homelessness, unemployment, and drug and alcohol addiction — problems faced by too many Vietnam veterans.

“The government can’t do everything. We have to do what we can to help these kids,” White said.