Opening:
The first meeting of the Oregon Brain Injury Task Force was called to order at 1:40 on May 17 in the Department of Education Building in Salem by Steve Johnson.

Attending:
Task Force Members: Bill Allen, Bryan Andresen, Rep. Vic Backlund, Mary Bunch, Carol Christofero-Snider, Steve Johnson, Mel Kohn, Anna Mallard, Sandra Moreland, Sen. Bill Morrisette, Bill Olson, Eric Peterson, Laurel Russell
Guests: Curtis Brown, Bob Joondeph, Martha Morvant, Richard Otto, Chrystal Snyder, Lynelle Wilcox
Staff: Sherry Stock
Absent: Randall Chestnut, M.D., Sidney Larsen.

A. Introduction
Steve Johnson welcomed all for attending the meeting and presentation by Chrystal Snyder, Executive Director of the Arizona Governor's Council on Spinal and Head Injuries. He thanked Bill Olson for all of his hard work in pulling this together. After introductions were made, TF members nominated Steve Johnson as Chair and Bill Olson as Vice-Chair, all voted in favor.

Notebooks were distributed with Task Force information for each attending TF member.

 

B. Presentation by Chystal Snyder

Chrystal Snyder, Executive Director of the Arizona Governor's Council on Spinal and Head Injuries, presented a PowerPoint presentation covering the Arizona experience in establishing and operating the State Council.

Overview:

In 1992 the State received a grant for a Spinal Cord and Head Injury Surveillance program from CDC. Two legislatures to help with strong interest and personal connections to this topic were instrumental in creating the Council. The initial Council together with the government set up statutes of what they would do and what they would provide. They are within the health services in the division of employment and rehab services, and took 3-4 years of hard collaborative effect to get the process running smoothly.

Initial funding was to come from a surcharge on speeding citations, but Arizona Supreme Court consolidated all trust funds and each gets their percentage share through. This share brings in about $1.8 million a year, but is still not enough to adequately provide the services needed.

Most important points:

• Look into cross systems prospective-what is not working and how can it be fixed;
• Have huge amount of brochures and info to hand out;
• Create and always follow strategic plan-review it yearly-all programs;
• Build in evaluation methods from the beginning and therefore will know if programs are working, if they are having a positive impact, such as customer satisfaction;
• Develop a commit and de-commit protocol - when instigating a new program must come up with one to de-commit;
• Systems change, build on the strengths of the existing programs;
• Partnership with other groups;
• Cross training-which opens up conversations - non combative collaborative way, sharing failures and successes;
• Important to get outside the box-looking at the persons journey back to recovery rather than what they can or cannot do.