The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. These stories are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Stories are not available for download but can be easily ordered by contacting the Resource Center:
Search results for "brain injury" ...
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Returning Home to Battle
While the Obama administration declared care for returning U.S. military personnel to be a top priority, reporter Aaron Glantz found something entirely different when he drilled down in the San Francisco Bay Area – home to more than a quarter-million veterans. In a series of stories for The Bay Citizen, which is part of the Center for Investigative Reporting, Glantz exposed an alarming failure inside the Department of Veterans Affairs, where mistakes and massive delays in processing disability claims for ailing veterans were the norm, sometimes leading to tragic consequences. Glantz was the first to detail this trend, finding that tens of thousands of Northern California veterans had been waiting an average of 313 days for a decision from the Oakland office on compensation claims for conditions as serious as traumatic brain injury. The Oakland regional office ranks fifth in the nation for number of veterans served – nearly 1 million veterans from the Oregon border to Bakersfield. The story was so shocking it prompted 16 members of Congress to demand immediate help for veterans filing through Oakland. More action quickly followed. Glantz had found through his reporting that the problem was not limited to the Bay Area. Next he set out to show it. The decision to dig deeper – to go beyond the local story – helped bring greater context to such a critically important issue. Through rich storytelling and clear writing, Glantz ably captured the plight of our veterans in his series, Returning Home to Battle.
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Brain Wars: How the Military is Failing Its Wounded
NPR and ProPublica investigated to see whether the government had kept its promise to improve health care for soldiers with brain injuries. The stories reveal that the military was not diagnosing most of the brain injuries and those that were diagnosed were not being recorded in the soldier's medical records.
Tags: brain injury; military; soldier; traumatic brain injury; diagnose
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Brain Wars: How the Military is Failing Its Wounded
The series uncovers a pattern of broken promises and ignored problems within the medical system for America's soldiers and veterans. Despite the hundreds of thousands of soldiers suffering from serious brain injuries, the military has continued to fail to diagnose and treat their injuries. In some cases, brain injuries were dismissed as headaches.
Tags: brain injury; veterans; military; military hospital; concussions
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"Brain Wars: How the Military Is Failing Its Wounded"
NPR and ProPublica teamed up to investigate the "medical system for America's troops and veterans." Brain damage caused by "shock waves" from roadside bombs have become the "signature wounds" of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The military promised to improve the health care for this type of injury, but reporters found a lack of diagnosis and treatment for the brain damage, as well as "bureaucratic indifference."
Tags: Iraq; Afghanistan; roadside bombs; military; Walter Reed Army Medical Center; TBI; brain injury; Fort Bliss; Pentagon; Building 805
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Command Mistake
As a result of this WISH-TV (Indianapolis, IN) report, the United States Marine Corps is now issuing helmets with ballistic padding to all marines. Previously, only the Army was issuing padded helmets; and some marines were buying their own padding. The story showed that college football players' helmets were more protective than the marine helmet."The cost to care for a head-injured soldier with permanent brain damage is $2.5 to $3 million. The cost of the helmet pads is as little as $30." Story contains on-ground elements filmed in Germany and Iraq.
Tags: Traumatic brain injury research; TBI; concussion; ballistic pad testing; football helmet testing; Kevlar helmet; roadside bomb blasts; Commanding General George Casey; Baghdad; Fallujah; Landstuhl Medical Center, Germany; Riddell; Brigadier General John Kelley; Congressman Steve Buyer; Indiana National Guard; Roudebush VA Medical Center; craniectomy; aphasia; Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz; Joint Theater Trauma Registry; Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center; DVBIC; Edward Hines Jr. VA Hospital; Traumatic Brain Injury in the War Zone; Susan Okie, MD; New England Journal of Medicine; American Football Coaches Association; University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Sports Medicine Concussion Program
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Toughman: Bouts with Danger
This set of stories from the Detroit News reveals disturbing statistics of the number of amateur boxers killed during the popular amateur boxing events. 12 men have died in the span of four months in this poorly regulated sport. Many of the contestants also suffers from brain damage. As the report reveals most of these incidents are due to negligence by the referees or the lack of immediate medical attention.
Tags: boxing; sports injuries; death due to boxing injuries; Toughman amateur boxing; Dore Toughman fighters; Art Dore; Toughman founder; amateur boxing; fatalities while boxing; FOIA
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Injured For Life
Times-Dispatch reporter Bill McKelway was finally able to penetrate the secretive Virginia Birth-related Neurological Injury Program, after years of trying to shed light on one of the most secret institutions in the state. The program was created to help pay compensation for children who suffered brain damage during birth at the hands of doctors and nurses that was "so severe that they never will be able to care for themselves." By paying out claims in secret, the intention was to keep malpractice lawsuits to a minimum and thus malpractice insurance low. But the institution was so secretive that even families involved in the program had no knowledge of each other, and the program claimed for years it was exempt from all open-records and open-meetings laws. However, McKelway was able to slowly gain information on the system, and he wrote dozens of stories on it in 2003 . The resulting reports by the Times-Dispatch revealed a program that was "woefully underfunded, failing to slow the increases in malpractice insurance, as it was designed to do, inconsistent in its application, and aimed at protecting doctors and hospitals more than helping brain-injured babies." In the wake of the reporting, the program's board meetings were made public for the first time in 15 years, and the institution is now subject to Virginia's freedom of information act.
Tags: FOIA; open records; birth; children; babies; baby; brain damage; neurological; nurse; doctor; physician; compensation; secret; malpractice; victim
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After the fall -- The challenges of major head injury
Whitt recounts the stories of two survivors of major head injuries, her own father being one of them. While modern medicine has made it possible for victims to survive, society has not yet developed an adequate system to provide for long-term care.
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Getting Away With Murder
"A four-month U-Team investigation discovered a legal loophole that allowed an accused killer to go free and raised questions about how defendants are evaluated from competency to stand trial. Ten years ago, a young man named Kenneth Curtis shot his estranged girlfriend to death and then shot himself in the head. He was charged with murder, but the court determined that due to the severity of his brain injury, he was incompetent to stand trial and unlikely ever to regain competency. As a result, Curtis was granted an unconditional release. But the U-Team found that two years after being released, Curtis was on the Dean's List at a local college. He then transferred to another college, where the U-Team found him pursuing a pre-med degree with plans to become a psychiatrist. The investigation also discovered that taxpayers were funding Curtis' education and that it was a loophole in the law that ultimately allowed this accused killer to go free."
Tags: NO TAPE TRANSCRIPT
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Mismanaged Care
The New York Times takes an in-depth look at how each year for the last decade, dozens of newborn babies have died or been left to struggle with brain damage or other lifelong injuries because of mistakes made by inexperienced doctors and poorly supervised midwives and nurses in the teeming delivery rooms of New York City's public hospitals. (March 1995)