For more than 35 years the Brain Injury Alliance of Iowa (BIAIA) has embraced a mission to create a better future through brain injury prevention, advocacy, education, research, and support. Starting as an all-volunteer organization in the 1980s, we have worked continuously for decades as an information hub for Iowans with brain injury and their families as well as an advocacy hub for statewide legislative and policy change.

Now staffed by a growing team of professionals, BIAIA develops, deploys and continuously improves an array of evidence-based and national best-practice services to support Iowans with brain injury in recovery, rehabilitation, and adjusting to life after their injuries. Our Neuro Resource Facilitation staff guide thousands of individuals and families as they learn how to "live well" with brain injury--helping them to access and keep a range of services and supports and to reduce the level of "disability" resulting from brain injury. Our services also enable many Iowans with brain-injury-based emotional and behavioral challenges to avoid incarceration, inappropriate psychiatric inpatient commitment, and expensive out-of-state, long-term institutionalization.

BIAIA has become increasingly effective in working with state agencies and policymakers to develop legislation and policy that impacts our constituency as well many other Iowans with chronic health conditions and disabilities. We provide professional, family and caregiver education to disseminate up-to-date information about emerging, evidence-based and best practices in brain injury care and treatment while working to raise awareness about, and prevent brain injury. With the death rate from brain injury progressively decreasing over the past 20 years, we now have more than 90,000 Iowans living with long-term disability from acquired brain injury in Iowa.