image: Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez, alongside 2024 Bezos Courage & Civility Award recipients Admiral William McRaven (ret.) and Eva Longoria.
Credit: Courtesy of the Bezos Courage and Civility Awards
Center for BrainHealth® at The University of Texas at Dallas has received a major match gift commitment from retired U.S. Navy four-star admiral and former University of Texas System chancellor William McRaven and his wife Georgeann. Adm. McRaven recently received the 2024 Bezos Courage & Civility Award presented by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez.
The $2 million challenge grant will support Optimal BrainHealth for Warfighters – including active-duty military, spouses and veterans. This program will help those with traumatic brain injury (TBI), post-traumatic stress (PTS) and similar issues, as well as building resilience ahead of deployment. It will provide critical training for proactive brain health and introduce essential tools to measure and track change over time, especially improvement. The challenge doubles the gift's impact by inviting the public to play a pivotal role in empowering our fighting men and women as well as veterans to build brain fitness and resilience.
“We are deeply grateful for Admiral and Mrs. McRaven’s tremendous and timely gift, which recognizes both our science-backed approach to proactive brain health, as well as our expansive, results-based experience working with all branches of the military, spouses and veterans,” said Center for BrainHealth chief director Sandra Bond Chapman, PhD. “This gift specifically allows us to concentrate efforts in deploying our brain health breakthroughs to benefit our service members who are willing to sacrifice their lives for our freedom.”
An Urgent Need
Active duty and veteran warriors routinely face challenges related to the high-pressure, intense nature of their professions, including how to transition to their time off. Interrelated health and functional impairments can emerge, such as the effects of traumatic brain injury (TBI), post-traumatic stress (PTS), sleep disturbance, long-term pain, addiction, depression and suicide, among others.
Optimal BrainHealth for Warfighters capitalizes on neuroplasticity to continually optimize brain performance and build cognitive reserve prior to any brain-related event, AND to enhance resilience that helps the individual rebound more quickly.
“We support the remarkable work being done by the Center for BrainHealth in strengthening brain performance for both veterans and active-duty military and their families,” said Adm. and Mrs. McRaven. “A brain that can think critically, that can function under stress, a brain that is resilient in the face of trauma, a brain that is creative, that is thoughtful, that is socially active… we all need and want that kind of brain.”
More About Optimal BrainHealth for Warfighters
Military operators never stop training so they can stay physically fit and constantly ready for action. Center for BrainHealth brings a similar, proactive approach to motivate brain fitness.
The program’s robust offerings feature the following:
- BrainHealth Index, a precision brain performance assessment: The BrainHealth Index measures and monitors an individual’s changes in holistic brain health (either up or down) over time. Charting change spurs self-motivation to strive for improvements and determination to detect and rebound from any declines. The Index, is a first-of-its-kind composite score derived with a proprietary algorithm across a wide array of validated assessments, providing a unique focus on the brain’s lifelong ability to improve – unlike most other assessments that are developed to detect and diagnosis problems.
- Strategic Memory Advanced Reasoning Tactics (SMART™) brain strategy training: This evidence-based training protocol emphasizes executive brain functions that guide strategic attention, critical reasoning and innovation. The training strengthens the brain’s remarkable capacity to continually:
- Hone clarity of thinking
- Enhance the ability to quickly turn complex inputs into insightful actions
- Promote emotional balance in adversity and unpredictability
- Upgrade empathetic connections to team members, loved ones, and sense of purpose
- Rewire itself to enhance brain performance, even years after suffering a brain-related event
- Proposed collaborations to train and certify POTFF (Preservation of Force and Family) and/or NICoE (National Intrepid Center of Excellence) personnel as BrainHealth Coaches at regional combat commands and Special Operations Command (SOCOM) bases: Sessions can be integrated into Force Readiness programs and offered during chronic stages post-injury, complementing acute care received for brain-related events or injuries.
- Continual brain fitness building with access to online training and habit reinforcement via the BrainHealth App.
A Timely Challenge to Donors
The Center will be raising funds to be matched through July 31, 2025.
To further spur donations that will be matched by this gift, the Center is focused on Optimal BrainHealth for Warfighters during this year’s North Texas Giving Day, the largest and most successful online giving initiative in the U.S., which took place through September 19.
If interested in making a donation, please contact Gail Cepak at gail.cepak@utdallas.edu or 972-883-3408.
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ABOUT CENTER FOR BRAINHEALTH
Center for BrainHealth®, part of The University of Texas at Dallas, is a translational research institute committed to enhancing, preserving, and restoring brain health across the lifespan. Major research areas include the use of functional and structural neuroimaging techniques to better understand the neurobiology supporting the continual growth of cognition, well-being and social connections in health and disease. This leading-edge scientific exploration is translated quickly into practical innovations to improve how people think, work and live, empowering people of all ages to thrive and unlock their brain potential. Translational innovations leverage 1) the BrainHealth Index, a proprietary measure that uniquely charts one’s upward (or downward) holistic brain health trajectory whatever their starting level; and 2) Strategic Memory Advanced Reasoning Tactics (SMART™) brain training, a strategy-based toolkit developed and tested by BrainHealth researchers and other teams over three decades.