Boot Campaign is unveiling a ground-breaking new veteran assistance program – ReBOOT – designed to provide a comprehensive, individualized, multi-disciplined approach to increasing mental and physical well-being for America’s valued military heroes, it was announced today by Boot Campaign CEO Robyn Payne. Whether combating traumatic brain injury (TBI), post-traumatic stress (PTS), depression or other transitional issues, ReBOOT tackles the root cause of the struggles affecting so many of our brave servicemen and women. Lieutenant (Ret.) Morgan Luttrell, U.S. Navy, a cognitive neuroscientist and Boot Campaign’s new director of development, will guide the ReBOOT initiative.
This pioneering new Boot Campaign program brings together world class mental and physical treatment partners thorough diagnostic evaluations, so each veteran gets specific care needed to live a fulfilling life. The program includes, but is not limited to, ReBOOT brain treatment partner’s Brain Treatment Center, Center For Brain Health at the University of Texas at Dallas, Brian Performance Institute, University of Texas, Southwestern and ReBOOT nutrition and fitness partners Virginia High Performance and EXOS and ReBOOT brain treatment coalition partners Infinite Hero Foundation, Team Never Quit, 22 Kill and Airpower Foundation.
“We’re proud to launch the ReBOOT assistance program, which is a new focus for Boot Campaign that was determined through careful consideration and months researching where the donations of our many generous supporters can be best utilized in accordance with our mission,” says Payne. “The commitment to our veterans and this program by our treatment partners is extremely gratifying and gets us off to a great start, and we welcome the support of the public and private sectors to make this important initiative a resounding success.”
Veteran advocate Luttrell, who completed more than 14 years of military service, including nine tours to Iraq, Afghanistan and other locations, helped design a program to foster a confluence of partners to address the current needs of our veterans. Since retiring from service in 2014, Luttrell joined the Brain Performance Institute and the Center for Brain Health at the University of Texas at Dallas, where he currently serves as a research scientist while pursuing an advanced degree in cognitive neuroscience.
“Since retiring from the Navy, it’s been a passion of mine to pursue opportunities of finding a better way to treat veterans and first responders in traumatic brain injury,” says Luttrell, “and I’m excited and honored to help Boot Campaign shape the ReBOOT initiative that will provide a more comprehensive program veterans can count on.”
Fundamentally, ReBOOT is an innovative pipeline to “reboot” and remove all financial barriers related to treatment and conditioning for overall mental and physical health and well-being for veterans. The ReBOOT protocol is a multi-discipline approach to treating veterans with TBI and other combat-related issues. Because brain injuries are so complex and different for each person, an Omni directional approach is necessary. To date there are no known cures for TBI, PTS and other brain disease, but there are a number of veteran-run institutes, centers and facilities that are moving the needle in the right direction to decrease the various issues plaguing America’s service member and give them and their families back what they lost during their service to this great nation.
The ReBOOT protocol brings forward the best TBI facilities in the country that offer a veteran-based treatment program and strategically aligns them with the veteran’s needs. The program begins with a pre-cognitive assessment so the candidate has a baseline to build on. The candidate will visit the appropriate center for valuable treatment and training protocols for their particular issues. Additionally, the candidates will have the opportunity to visit a high performance institutes to balance out their nutrition and get their bodies back into physical shape. The last stop in the pipeline is to conduct a post-cognitive assessment in order to measure how far the candidate has come. The amazing part about this concept is the science and treatment is there, the ReBOOT program is connecting the dots.
“The pipeline is a living, breathing, ever-changing design that ebbs and flows with the times,” explains Luttrell. “If one particular treatment is not working any longer we replace it with the latest and greatest cutting-edge science. ReBOOT is all about the veterans and bringing them back!”
Donations in support of ReBOOT go to veteran grants for everything they need to regain positive mental health, including treatment at an innovative brain treatment center, travel costs, living expenses and lost income replacement. Approximately 22 percent of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom combat wounds are brain injuries, and Boot Campaign believes financial concerns should NOT be the barrier between a warrior and necessary treatment. The average cost for a veteran to receive individual health and wellness care can run from up to $100,000.
For more information on Boot Campaign’s ReBOOT assistance program, please visit the website at: http://www.bootcampaign.org/reboot/.
