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Brain Injury team members (from left) Dianne Campbell, LCSW, Brandi Dawson, M.S., Daniel Bercher, Ph.D., and Sheila Beck, MSPT, presented on the program at Jail Resource Day.
Image by Benjamin Waldrum
UAMS Brain Injury Program Trains Law Enforcement on Recognizing, Responding to Brain Injuries
| Over the past year, the UAMS Institute for Digital Health & Innovation’s Brain Injury Program has begun a major initiative to help law enforcement better recognize and respond to people with traumatic brain injury (TBI), aiming to promote safer encounters and deescalate incidents. Already the program has trained hundreds of officers and continues to gain momentum.
Recently, the Brain Injury Program was one of several featured speakers for Jail Resource Day, sponsored by the Arkansas Department of Public Safety and held this year at the University of Central Arkansas. The annual event, held Oct. 9, aims to create partnerships, promote resources and build solutions for communities.
Brain Injury team members Dianne Campbell, LCSW, Brandi Dawson, M.S., Daniel Bercher, Ph.D., and Sheila Beck, MSPT, spoke about the importance of making brain injury education and resources available and answered questions from the audience. They also talked about a new initiative that is helping educate and train law enforcement officers on TBI.
In 2021, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Assistance launched the Connect and Protect: Law Enforcement Behavioral Health program, which focuses on helping law enforcement and behavioral health agencies work together to improve crisis responses for people with mental health needs or co-occurring disorders. Campbell, Dawson and Bercher helped secure a three-year, $353,485 Connect and Protect grant for UAMS in 2024.
“Dianne’s been the spark who made all this happen from the beginning,” Bercher said.
“My hope is that we build a better neurologic workforce, to help them feel better at what they do, and in turn have better outcomes with people that they work with,” Campbell said.Benjamin Waldrum
Their project, Crisis Care Coalition with Police Understanding & Learning for Safe Encounters (C3PULSE), partners with the Arkansas Department of Public Safety and Little Rock Police Department, along with crisis stabilization units in Sebastian and Craighead counties, to train law enforcement officers across the state in crisis response. The project is also supported by the National Association of State Head Injury Administrators (NASHIA).
“We want to help train law enforcement and crisis stabilization staff so they are better informed about brain injuries,” Dawson said. “Many individuals in crisis often have a history of brain injury due to substance abuse, mental health, law enforcement involvement and domestic abuse. We’re not just working with prisons, but all law enforcement, including cadets as they go through training.”
More than 2 million people in the United States are incarcerated, according to the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics. Although Arkansas’ prison population comprises only 1.3% of all inmates nationwide, its incarceration rate — the ratio of people jailed relative to total population — ranks third nationally and is twice as high as the national average, according to data obtained from the Prison Policy Initiative.
Inmates have a significantly higher prevalence of TBI. Studies estimate that that as many as 60-80% of incarcerated adults are living with TBI — a rate 7 to 10 times higher than the general population, according to statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Brain Injury Association of America.
People with brain injuries can exhibit symptoms that can be misinterpreted, including being uncooperative or indifferent, irritable or impulsive, a decreased ability to process information, and they may exhibit unusual moods or appear intoxicated. Bercher said that providing ID cards showing they are TBI survivors can help avoid escalating potential incidents.
“A lot of times people with TBI are misdiagnosed as having behavioral issues,” Campbell said. This includes victims of domestic violence, she added, who have a TBI rate of “almost 100%.”
“Brain injury is not going to be the silver bullet for criminal justice, but it’s a big piece of the puzzle if you start paying close attention to a lot of your people,” Bercher said.
C3PULSE is designed to primarily benefit law enforcement and their communities through education, but it will also help streamline access to resources for anyone found to have a TBI. Currently it focuses on incarcerated adults, but it will soon include juveniles as well, Dawson said. The CDC reports that one-third of incarcerated juveniles have a history of TBI.
The program has trained approximately 500 police cadets since February over 14 sessions held in North Little Rock, Fort Smith, Russellville, Springdale, Batesville, Camden and Benton. More trainings are already being planned across the state.
“My hope is that we build a better neurologic workforce, to help them feel better at what they do, and in turn have better outcomes with people that they work with,” Campbell said.
With the first year of C3PULSE drawing to a close, the next steps are further implementation, including developing more resources on paper and online, Dawson said. With the program so far proving to be extremely popular, it’s important to use that momentum to spread awareness.
“To say it’s spreading like wildfire would not be inaccurate,” Dawson said.