Donald Trump’s 2026 fiscal budget aims to eliminate the Centers for Disease Control department in charge of traumatic brain injury (TBI) research and education along with $8.3 million in federal funding.

There are specific fears that Heads Up, which administers concussion-prevention programs for youth and high-school coaches in 45 states, would be disbanded if the budget proposal is approved. ‘

Those fears are compounded by an April 1 CDC move, placing five employees who managed the program on paid administrative leave. According to its website, more than 10 million people have taken part in these online training programs.

‘We’re really worried about the hundreds of thousands of coaches who have to take this training,’ a CDC official told ESPN. ‘This is really built in, and we’ve lost the whole team [behind the program].’

Trump’s proposed budget would slash $3.59 billion from the CDC but maintains the National Insтιтutes of Health’s insтιтute for brain research. However, it’s unknown if any TBI programs would be included as the NIH’s brain research primarily focuses on medical issues, likes stroke and migraines.

On their surface, Trump’s proposed cuts have nothing to do with the NFL, which pledged $100 million for TBI research in 2016 and has since spent tens of millions in this field. But for a sport struggling to maintain participation rates at the youth level, the cuts could prove catastrophic.

(From left) Commanders owner Josh Harris, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and Trump

A 2024 survey by Project Play, an award-winning initiative from the Aspen Insтιтute, found that participation in tackle football decreased 5 percent from 2019 through 2023. And since 2013, participation rates in tackle football among boys between the ages of 6 and 12 dropped from just 3.5 percent to a mere 2.7 percent in 2023.

Although participation across all youth sports is down, many experts point to safety issues to explain gridiron football’s particular decline.

In 2023 alone, three players died of traumatic head injuries, while 10 more died of other causes, including heat stroke, according to the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

And this wasn’t an anomaly.

‘So I would not be particularly alarmed about two deaths in a week,’ Robert Cantu, medical director of the organization, told The ᴀssociated Press in 2024. ‘But I would be very alarmed if we had two deaths per week for four or five weeks in a row. Because we’ve never had that before.’

Many experts and football players including the Trump-supporting Brett Favre have argued in favor of banning tackle football for youth athletes.

Robert Cantu, the director of the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, also works with the Concussion Legacy Foundation

These days, NFL players can be evaluated for concussions in tents along the sidelines 

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‘The body, the brain, the skull is not developed in your teens and single digits,’ Favre told DailyMail.com in 2018. ‘I cringe. I see these little kids get tackled and the helmet is bigger than everything else on the kid combined. They look like they’re going to break in half.’

‘I suggest age 12 would be a good place to start the conversation,’ Dr. Chris Nowinski, the Concussion Legacy Foundation’s CEO and a former WWE wrestler, told the AP. ‘But any minimum age requirement that takes into consideration brain health for children would be welcome.’

Christy Collins, president of the Indianapolis-based Datalys Center for Sports Injury Research and Prevention, credited better education and awareness for an increase in reported concussions between 2005 and 2018.

‘Athletes [and their parents] may have been more likely to recognize symptoms of concussion and report those symptoms to medical professionals,’ Collins said told the AP.

Now, with Trump’s proposed budget cuts, that education could become a thing of the past. According to Brain Injury ᴀssociation of America’s board member Dr. Owen Perlman, these cuts would ‘roll back decades of progress’ on TBI research and education.

‘For many people with concussions or certainly moderate or severe brain injuries, there’s no endpoint,’ Perlman told ESPN. ‘It’s a lifetime problem, and there needs to be lifetime funding for it.’