Winter 2025

A warm welcome to the safe living space quarterly newsletter

Whether brain injuries are from sports, military service, bullying, working as a first responder, consensual strangulation, violence, or falls... THEY ALL COUNT and must be identified and appropriately treated! Safe Living Space is committed to brain injury research, education and advocacy so that our communities are safe places to live, work, and play. 
Safe Living Space recently updated its website to align with our mission to integrate cutting-edge education, research, and policy to identify, prevent, and treat brain injury. We hope you join us on this journey for quarterly updates in our new Safe Living Space Newsletter. Your continued commitment enables us to expand our efforts, helping us grow and fulfill our mission by advancing brain injury research, education, and advocacy. Together, we are making a difference.
The Safe Living Space 5K Your Way-historically held in October, will now be in March aligning with Brain Injury Awareness Month. Save the date and plan to increase your impact, as Safe Living Space focuses on the mental health symptoms of brain injury in 2025. 
Thank you for being on this journey with us!

Research Initiatives

Safe Living Space Research has made significant strides in brain injury research, focusing on three key initiatives: brain trauma, mental health, and domestic and intimate partner violence. With the support of our 30 volunteers from across the United States and several global advisors, we have had 10 abstracts accepted for presentation and submitted one manuscript. Our clinical research has been presented at both national and international meetings. Highlights include identifying a subtype of concussions called “Traumatic Brain Stem Injury,” which is linked to long-term post-concussive symptoms, and exploring the connection between abuse-induced brain injury and the development of Multiple Sclerosis. For additional information on our 2024 abstracts and poster presentations related to brain trauma, mental health, and domestic and intimate partner violence, please see the initiates tabs located in the website header.

Research spotlight

Safe Living Space Steps into the Mental Health World: Research at the National American Brain Injury Society Conference and a New Vision for Trauma and Brain Injury Informed Care

Seven different abstracts from Safe Living Space were presented at the 2024 National American Brain Injury Society (NABIS) Conference in Las Vegas, covering a breadth of topics including the link between peripartum depression and undiagnosed brain injury and a needs assessment of mental health provider attitudes towards brain injury. Alarmingly, our research has found that the majority of mental healthcare providers are not confident in their ability to recognize the signs and symptoms of a brain injury, despite a high estimated prevalence of brain injury in their clients. To address these issues, Safe Living Space in collaboration with public health officers is developing a framework for understanding the intersection between mental health and brain injury. It is now a best practice in New York State that all licensed medical providers assess for TBI in survivors of DV/IPV, moving toward providing Trauma and Brain Injury Informed Care.

Abstracts:

--Disparities in trauma-informed care. Understanding mental health providers’ ability to identify clients with traumatic brain injury resulting from physical violence.

--Prevalence of concussion and traumatic brain injury secondary to domestic and intimate partner violence: A systematic review and meta analysis

--Are the symptoms of peripartum depression a consequence of undiagnosed brain injury from intimate partner violence?

--High School Football Players’ Knowledge and Attitude Regarding Concussions Contribute to a Staggering Occurrence of Unreported and Unrecognized Brain Injury.

--Could abuse-induced brain injury and strangulation be a physiological risk factor for developing multiple sclerosis?

--Intersection of Traumatic Brain Injury and POTS (Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome):  Single Center Case Series

--Using clinical testing to optimize evaluations and rehabilitation triage post-concussion COVA Study Group

Safe Living Space Continuous Efforts to Understand The Occurrence and Repercussions of Repetitive Brain Injury: Research at the National American Brain Injury Society Conference

Safe Living Space is dedicated to researching and understanding the implications of repetitive brain injuries resulting from a variety of causes. Most notably, the research team seeks to understand the social and physiological factors perpetuating recurring brain injury secondary to intimate partner violence, military service, law enforcement service, and participation in American football. At NABIS 2024, the research team presented on the factors and narratives perpetuating unrecognized brain injury resulting from high school football. This cohort study found that 81% of high school football athletes do not adequately recognise and report concussion symptoms. More about the research can be found here.

Wendy wood Kjelvik women making history award

Last March, Safe Living Space awarded the Women Making History Award to our late team member and beloved friend, Wendy Wood-Kjelvik.

As a founding volunteer of SLS in 2021, Wendy worked hard to bring changes in the diagnosis, treatment, and care of individuals with recognized and unrecognized brain injury caused by domestic and intimate partner violence (DV/IPV). She was instrumental in crafting our mission statement, the very heart of our organization, and contributed to a variety of projects, including grant applications, the annual Safe Living Space 5K-Your Way, and brain injury guidelines for mental health providers as Co-Lead of the SLS Mental Health Psychosocial team. She was also one of SLS’s top donors, funding the operating expenses of the Brain Injury 5K so that all donations could go towards the mission she very much believed in. With her spirit to guide us, we have renamed the award the Wendy Wood Kjelvik Women Making History Award to honor exceptional women changemakers in the fields of traumatic brain injury and DV/IPV so that her inspiration for this work continues.

Voice of safe living space… A message from our founder

As Covid was starting we were seeing a surprising number of women coming to our Mayo Clinic Network Affiliated TBI and Concussion Clinic at NorthBay. When we reviewed our first 100 cases to assure the clinic was providing the best care possible, we identified a group of patients who received their brain injury from abuse and strangulation. Because we hadn't seen this patient population previously, we did a literature/research review to learn the best patient care practices for survivors of DV/IPV with brain injuries/concussions and multiple concussions. When we found there were NO GUIDELINES or Pathways of Care for Women, LGBTQ+ and Men who had experienced abuse induced brain injury, despite the terrific understanding of concussion in sports and for motor vehicle collisions, we began to realize the gap this meant for healthcare in the US and around the world. We quickly understood that following the traditional academic approach of presenting research in just medical journals would take a decade or more to get understanding and care to the 58 MILLION people in the US alone who have had one or more concussions from domestic/intimate partner violence, sexual assault, child abuse and trafficking. Were there two tracks of care in the emergency response system where men coming in with black eyes from a bar fight were immediately evaluated for concussion and often received a Head CT, and women coming in with black eyes from Partner Violence were referred for Mental Health symptoms... without the recognition that some of the most prominent and robust symptoms of concussion are mental health symptoms such as depression, anxiety, attention problems, PTSD and suicidality. We are proud to be making a difference on a national and global level with our work influencing the standard of care in New York State with the Governor's guidance to licensed health care providers that anyone with the lived experience of DV/IPV be evaluated for Traumatic Brain Injury, with an invited presentation to the World Federation of Neurosurgical Societies with members of the WHO G4 Alliance present, and with our US Supreme Court Brief advising extending the time of emergency medical after Abuse Induced TBI and Strangulation to 24 hours. We hope you will join us on our continued journey to help those with often unrecognized brain injury and cumulative concussions from sports, military training and service, child abuse/bullying, working as a first responder, falls/accidents and partner violence... they all count!