42 U.S.C. § 280b–1c — Prevention of traumatic brain injury

(a) In general: The Secretary, through the Director of the CDC, may run projects to reduce how often traumatic brain injuries happen. The Secretary can carry these out directly, or fund public or nonprofit groups through grants or contracts. The Secretary may also give technical help, directly or through those awards, for planning, building, and running such projects. (b) Certain activities: These projects may include: (1) Researching effective ways to prevent traumatic brain injury. (2) Running public information and education programs about preventing such injury, and raising public awareness of its health effects. (3) Running a national education and awareness campaign about such injury, tied to the Secretary's health-status goals for 2020 (known as Healthy People 2020). This includes: (A) Sharing information nationally about: (i) How common the injury is. (ii) The injury itself and the secondary conditions that can follow it after a patient leaves the hospital or emergency room. (B) Giving information in primary care settings, including emergency rooms and trauma centers, about what state-level services and resources are available. (c) Coordination of activities: The Secretary must make sure these activities are coordinated, as appropriate, with other Public Health Service agencies that also work on traumatic brain injury. (d) "Traumatic brain injury" defined: In this section, "traumatic brain injury" means a brain injury the person acquired after birth. It does not include brain problems caused by conditions someone is born with or that get worse over time, and it does not include birth trauma. It can include brain injury caused by lack of oxygen due to trauma. The Secretary may update this definition after consulting states and other appropriate public or nonprofit groups.