About
About Montana Brain Injury Foundation
Montana Brain Injury Foundation is being established to create a stronger, more connected brain injury ecosystem across Montana.
What we believe
We believe knowledge changes lives, and that people affected by brain injury should have access to information, connection, resources, and meaningful advocacy regardless of where they live.
That last part matters more in Montana than almost anywhere else. This is a state where a person can be three hours from the nearest specialist, where the nearest neuropsychologist may be in another time zone, and where the follow-up appointment that would have caught something is the one nobody could make the drive for.
MBIF is being developed around four core areas: education, awareness, advocacy, and connection. Each of them exists to close the same gap, which is the distance between what is known about brain injury and what reaches the people living with one.
Vision
A Montana where every person affected by brain injury has access to knowledge, connection, resources, and opportunity.
Core areas
Four areas, one aim.
- Education
Building knowledge and understanding.
Brain injury is one of the most misunderstood health events a person can live through. MBIF is being built to put clear, plain-language information in the hands of the people who need it first: the person who was injured, the family trying to help, and the professional who sees them next.
- Awareness
Making brain injury visible.
Most brain injury is invisible. It does not show on the outside, it rarely shows on a routine scan, and the people living with it are often told they look fine. MBIF intends to change what Montanans understand about brain injury, so that the people living with one are recognized rather than explained away.
- Advocacy
Advancing better systems and outcomes.
A person in Montana can be hours from the nearest specialist. Distance turns a hard recovery into an impossible one. MBIF is being developed to advocate for a system that works across a state this size, so that where a person lives is not the thing that decides how well they recover.
- Connection
Bringing people and resources together.
People affected by brain injury often find what they need by accident, years later, from someone else who went through it. MBIF is being built as the place that shortens that search, and as a way for people who have walked this road to find each other.
Where MBIF is today
Being built in the open.
Montana Brain Injury Foundation is in its organizational formation phase. That means the mission, the four core areas, and the direction are set, and the structure around them is still being put in place.
Nothing on this site describes a program as running that is not running, or a relationship as formal that is not yet formal. As each piece is finalized, it will appear here.
MBIF was founded by Shanna Melton, Founder & President.