RELEASE: June 13, 2002

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The Division of Disability Services has received a one-year, $100,000 federal grant that will help the state improve the way minorities with traumatic brain injuries learn about and receive services.

"We are very pleased that the Department of Health and Human Services has awarded this grant to the Division of Disability Services," said Department of Human Services Commissioner Gwendolyn L. Harris. "The money will help us find better ways of identifying and reaching minorities who have suffered the devastating effects of a traumatic brain injury so that we can make sure they know that services are available to help them meet the challenges of daily living."

The Division of Disability Services (DDS), which has been designated by the Governor as the lead state agency for Traumatic Brain Injury services, will administer the grant in partnership with the Brain Injury Association of New Jersey.

DDS sought the grant because of concerns that minorities with serious brain injuries were not receiving community-based support services at the same rate as non-minorities, even though non-minorities suffer such injuries at a higher rate. In some urban areas of New Jersey, where there are large concentrations of African-Americans and Hispanics, studies have shown that people sustain serious brain injuries at a rate that is as much as three times greater than in the state’s population as a whole.

The grant money will be used develop better ways of identifying minority people with traumatic brain injuries and providing them and their families with information and referral to services. For example, training sessions will be offered to social workers, case managers and others working in the public health system to teach them how to identify people with traumatic brain injury and about the services available to them. Community-based support services include assistance with household chores, bathing and personal care, transportation, respite care, behavioral therapy and help with making physical modifications to the home.

"We are concerned because minorities who have suffered traumatic brain injuries do not seem to be taking advantage of programs that available to help them," said DDS Director William Ditto. "We want to do everything we can to connect minorities to appropriate community-based support services that will help them continue to live in their own homes. In addition to programs that the state administers, varying types of assistance are available through local and county governments as well as private agencies."

Each year, approximately 10,000 people in New Jersey suffer a traumatic brain injury serious enough to require hospitalization or cause death, with or without hospital care. The most common causes of these injuries are motor vehicle accidents and falls, and the highest rates of injury are in people between 15 and 24, and in people 75 years and older. Nearly two-thirds of all traumatic brain injuries occur among males.

However, while the rate of brain injury among the general population is about 118 per 100,000, the incidence is much higher in the state’s urban areas, where large concentrations of African Americans and Hispanics live. In 1997, which is the latest year available, the rate was 371 per 100,000 in Camden; 306 per 100,000 in Jersey City; 293 per 100,000 in Trenton; and 174 per 100,000 in Newark.