Ground broken on new facilities aimed at treating brain injuries

FORT BELVOIR, Va. Air Force Master Sgt. Earl Covel had gone through just about every treatment anyone could think of for the brain injuries he sustained over his 12 deployments even the hyberbaric chamber. Nothing seemed to be working very well.

They were just throwing spears, doing the best they could, he said.

Then a friend told him about the National Intrepid Center of Excellence at Bethesda, Md., a facility dedicated to the treatment, diagnosis and research of mild traumatic brain injury and psychological health issues.

Covel was assigned an army of providers, he said, and his wife was encouraged to participate in the process. The team led Covel off a very dark path, he said.

But while hundreds of thousands of combat veterans are suffering from brain injuries, the NICoE can only treat about 250 servicemembers a year.

To help fill the gap, the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund, which funded and built the NICoE, has embarked on a $100 million fundraising campaign to build at least nine NICoE satellite centers at bases around the country. On Wednesday, officials broke ground on the first two at Fort Belvoir near Washington and at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.

The satellite centers are a public-private partnership with the military. The bases will let the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund build the centers on base land, paid for solely with donations. Each center will cost about $11 million and take about a year to build. Once theyre done, the fund will turn them over to the military bases, said Richard Santulli, chairman of the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund.

The country owes a debt to the servicemembers who keep us safe, Santulli said, and funding and building the centers is our way of paying that debt.

The foundation has raised $25 million so far and will use the money for new centers as they raise it, said Bill White, CEO of Constellation Group, which is mounting the fundraising effort for the satellite centers.

This is an urgent need, he said. I think were doing a lot more than we ever did, but its still not enough.

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Ground broken on new facilities aimed at treating brain injuries