Dear Friends of BART,
In 2016, along with several distinguished physicians and others, our family formed the Brain Alternative Rehabilitation Therapies Foundation (BART Foundation), a 501(c)(3) public charity, to explore and promote the use of safe alternative therapies for brain injury survivors. We drew upon years of studying alternative therapies for brain injuries, along with decades of experience as caregivers to a brain-injured son, to focus and articulate our mission. Our son Bart passed away in 2022, twenty-one years post-injury, but not before making a remarkable recovery driven by alternative therapies, especially HBOT. He lived a full and meaningful life dedicated to encouraging and inspiring others on similar journeys.
At year’s end, we want to provide you with an overview of our activities for 2025. We hope you will make a tax-deductible contribution before the end of the year. Your support allows us to fulfill our mission of helping TBI/ABI survivors and their families learn more about safe and effective alternative treatments. https://www.thebartfoundation.org/donate/
Accomplishments for 2025, Work to Do for 2026!
Most remarkable of all, working with TreatNOW.org and others, we spearheaded an effort to get a bill passed in NYS to fund HBOT for veterans with TBI/PTSD. There are roughly 35,716 veterans in NY who would qualify! The bill is NYS A1869/S1715, “which establishes a hyperbaric oxygen therapy pilot program to treat veterans suffering from traumatic brain injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder.”
The current bill (NYS A1869/S1715), “The Bart Law,” is still in committee, but has earned unanimous bipartisan sponsorship of both the Assembly Health Committee and the Veterans Affairs Committee https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2025/A1869. There is a good chance the bill will be passed and funded this coming session. If you know anyone in the NYS Legislature or the Governor’s office, please tell them you support the bill. This has been a long-term goal of BART since 2015, when my son Bart and I testified to the Joint Health committees of the NYS legislature.
We were blessed to have Bart with us for 37 years, and we are grateful and moved to know that his legacy may live on in this groundbreaking law. The mostly young veterans struggling with TBI/PTSD are very prone to substance abuse and suicide. They are our brothers and sisters in brain injury. Their lives are tied to ours.
Video Resources and Zoom Webinars
Throughout 2025, we continued to develop our video resources, both on our website and YouTube Channel. Thought leaders in each therapy have graciously agreed to be interviewed for these lively, informative presentations, which may be more accessible for some than written works. Our YouTube Channel has 24 videos, which have been viewed over 39,000 times. There are over 600 subscribers. https://www.youtube.com/@bart-foundation
We introduced an innovative series of webinars featuring leading figures in alternative therapies. Audience participation is invited, and then the webinars are archived for viewing on YouTube, Facebook, and our website. This allows us to reach ever wider circles within the brain injury community. Some of our guests this past year were: Dr. Perry Perretz, on Oxygen’s Role in Healing, Anita Saltmarche on Photobiomodulation, Dr. Ronald Swatzyna on Integrating Neurofeedback with PBM, Dr. Robert Beckman, Founder of TreatNow.org., the premier VSO advocating for HBOT as healing medicine for veterans with TBI/PTSD, Dr. Ronald Stram of the Stram Center for Integrative Medicine on HBOT and intravenous CBD, Dr. Marvin Berman of The Quietmind Foundation on Healing with Light. Stay tuned for more.
Website Enhancements and Research News
We are excited to have made good progress in making the BART Foundation’s websites more accessible to all visitors. Thanks in part to board member Bryan Cush, co-owner of Tidal Health Group, we now have the UserWay accessibility widget installed on our website. All of our pages, including our news articles, now show an icon in the lower-left corner. By clicking on the icon, an accessibility menu appears. The menu allows the person to make changes to the page, such as highlighting links, increasing color contrast, making text larger or with increased spacing, and more. Our YouTube Channel features subtitles for most videos.
Our website’s News Blog has become one of the most useful resources on alternative therapies available anywhere. We cover clinical trials and studies of our six official alternatives, and feature emerging therapies that are not quite ready for primetime, but worthy of our “watch list” like transcranial magnetic stimulation therapy (TMS) and other forms of non-invasive low-energy brain stimulation (NIBS), branched-chain amino acids therapy (BCAA), and others. https://www.thebartfoundation.org/category/news/
The BART Foundation added user-friendly information about TBI/ABI to our website. It is ideal for family and friends who want to better understand what these terms mean and how they impact a person. Please share this with those in your network who may benefit! https://www.thebartfoundation.org/understanding-brain-injuries/
Social Media, Partners, and TBI/ABI Outreach
Our Facebook page continues to grow! On average, we reach over 20,000 people every month, with over 3,500 post engagements and over 3,100 followers. https://www.facebook.com/theBARTFoundation/
The BART Foundation’s Barlean’s Oil Scholarship, which puts Omega-3 oil into the hands of TBI/ABI survivors who could not otherwise afford it, is the first of its kind! While Barlean’s is not keeping metrics, we continue to hear from grateful recipients who marvel at the ease and flexibility of use. (The program also includes free home delivery). While we do not have the resources to directly fund services, we have compiled a database of entities that offer scholarships to brain injury survivors. We often refer to constituent inquiries there.
We believe that there is a vast undercounting of persons with TBI – including victims of partner abuse, homeless individuals, incarcerated persons, and even some high school and college athletes. We are now focusing on this area and regularly provide updated information. (E.g., Some studies show as many as 50% to 80% of prisoners suffer from mostly undiagnosed TBIs!). https://www.thebartfoundation.org/connecting-tbi-and-domestic-violence/
Unfortunately, there’s one thing that has not changed much: Physician ignorance about HBOT in the US is one reason adoption by health insurers and state legislatures has been so painstakingly slow. Ask any physician how much time they spent studying HBOT in medical school or since. If they’re honest, they’ll admit none or practically none. What caught my attention in this short video was the testimony of the little girl’s mother, herself a physician, that she was not aware of HBOT, that she was not taught about it in medical school. https://www.thebartfoundation.org/undeniable-evidence-a-mothers-fight/ And so our educational mission goes on.
Our Gold Star Seal of Transparency
Candid continues to recognize The BART Foundation with its Gold Star Seal of Transparency. Candid is the premier organization that assesses and rates charities, and the Gold Seal level is awarded only to the top 1% of the millions of 501(c)(3)s. Knowledgeable donors consult rankings to assess a charity’s trustworthiness. This accomplishment is a tribute to our board members’ hard work and the help of our loyal supporters. All hands well done!
If you have questions or feedback about this yearly update, please let us know. Your love and support are a boon to us always. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation to support our mission of researching and advocating for safe alternative therapies for ABI/TBI. As a 501(c)(3) educational charity with little overhead, donations go almost entirely to further our mission. https://www.thebartfoundation.org/donate/
Stay safe and well. Warmest of holiday greetings, from your sisters and brothers in brain injury,
Joel, Dayle, and The BART Foundation team
Guidestar Seal of Transparency