At Senate Forum, Warren Calls for More Tools to Prevent and Treat Servicemembers’ Traumatic Brain Injuries

September 06, 2024

At Senate Forum, Warren Calls for More Tools to Prevent and Treat Servicemembers' Traumatic Brain Injuries

Boston, MA - U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), chair of the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Personnel, delivered opening remarks at a Senate forum on addressing blast overpressure, which can cause traumatic brain injuries for servicemembers, and mitigating suicide risk after exposure.

Opening Statement
Friday, September 6, 2024

I'm pleased to welcome you all today to a forum to discuss the impacts of blast overpressure and the need to better protect our service members.

All three of my brothers served in the military, so supporting our active-duty service members and our veterans is personal to me. Service members put their lives on the line, and in return, we have a duty to do all that we can to keep them safe, to protect them from unnecessary risks, and to get them the care they deserve.

I am proud to have been fighting for our troops and veterans since I first came to Congress. Since I joined the Senate Armed Services Committee eight years ago, I have been able to expand those efforts.

I am especially proud of the work we've done under the Biden-Harris Administration. Veterans fought for over a decade to get care after they were exposed to burn pits that made them sick. Senate Democrats and President Biden and Vice President Harris actually got it done. We passed the PACT Act to expand VA healthcare and benefits for those veterans, as well as veterans from our previous wars who were exposed to toxic substances like Agent Orange. To date, this has delivered lifesaving care and benefits to more than one million veterans and their families.

Private partners like Home Base are also helping us keep our promises to service members and veterans. Last February, we celebrated federal funding that I helped secure to support Home Base's work with Special Operations Forces with Traumatic Brain Injury. This money has also been used to help families of the fallen and to strengthen resilience in children from military families. So far, we have managed to get a total of $15 million for programs like Home Base, and it's either available or somewhere in the pipeline.

Today's forum will focus on the work that DoD and Home Base are doing to address blast overpressure. Just a reminder for those not working in the field, "blast overpressure" is the pressure resulting from a shock wave that exceeds normal atmospheric pressure. Traumatic brain injuries are considered one of the signature wounds of our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Traumatic brain injuries and other injuries resulting from blast overpressure may come from roadside bombs, but far more often, TBI comes instead from the service members firing their own weapons. Much of this exposure is not in combat, but in training right here at home.

The consequences of blast exposure have been devastating: suicide, depression, seizures, and more. To see just how these blasts damage service members' brains, the New York Times recently provided a helpful demonstration. It involves just a couple items - a beer bottle filled with water and a mallet. And I want to play this because I think it's a way for people to get a deeper understanding of what "blast overpressure" means. That it's not just a bump, like getting hit on the arm, that it's something very different.

So we've got a video for that.

[NYT Video Demonstration]

The next time you have a beer, you can think about your brain.

Addressing blast overpressure has been a critical priority of mine over the last seven years. I've worked closely with Senator Ernst on this issue, and I held a hearing on it in February in my role as Chair of the Senate Armed Services Personnel Subcommittee. I also introduced the bipartisan, bicameral Blast Overpressure Safety Act with several colleagues, and I've secured several provisions from this bill in the fiscal year 2025 National Defense Authorization Act. I am very pleased that last month the Department of Defense released a new policy to address these critical issues.

For today's forum I want to focus on three issues.

First, we need to use every tool we have to give service members access to the care they deserve. Home Base is one of our most powerful providers. Their comprehensive brain health and trauma treatment program returns 95% of service members back into the field. It also engages family members in the process, so they are able to get the support they need and better able to help a loved one.

Second, we must understand the long-term effects of this exposure to blast overpressure. Brain injuries may be only part of the story. Special Operations Forces, such as Green Berets and Navy SEALs, are one of the communities at highest risk for blast overpressure. Doctors are starting to see Special Operators with rates of above-the-neck tumors and cancers that are higher than they would otherwise expect. These numbers are preliminary, but the pattern is truly alarming. They make clear that we need to explore the long-term consequences of exposure, so that we can better understand what we're up against, and I will be pushing Congress hard to support this work.

Third, we need to do a better job of mitigating the risks of suicide after extensive blast overpressure exposure. In late June, the New York Times reported that a DoD lab "found distinctive damage from repeated blast exposure in every brain it tested" of Navy SEALs who had died by suicide. We need to do a better job to help those at greatest risk and to help family members recognize when service members are in crisis and need help.

So, to our panelists, welcome, thank you very much for appearing. I am very pleased to have an opportunity to welcome:

• Dr. David J. Smith, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Readiness Policy and Oversight
• Kathy Lee, Director of Warfighter Brain Health Policy at DoD
• Dr. Ross Zafonte, Chief of Traumatic Brain Injury and Health and Wellness Programs at Home Base
• Dennis Hernandez, a retired Green Beret in the Army Special Forces who received critical care at Home Base

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