I am not a politician. I am not a doctor. I am a veteran’s daughter and a woman who has watched a young man I’ve known since grade school bury too many friends.
He is not my son by blood. He is family nonetheless. I watched him grow up, enlist, serve, and come home different. The light behind his eyes – the one every mother and every woman who’s ever loved a boy recognizes – dimmed somewhere between deployment and discharge. And now he is burying his brothers. One after another. Men he served with. Men who came back with the same hollowed-out look, the same short fuse, the same thousand-yard stare.
Last month, another one was buried.
The VA’s answer – every time, for every one of them – is the same: a bottle of pills and a six-month follow-up. Sertraline. Quetiapine. Clonazepam. Trazodone for sleep. Whatever the pharmaceutical rep dropped off that quarter. “Here. Take these. See you in 180 days.”
That is not treatment. That is chemical restraint dressed up as medicine. And the bodies keep piling up.
So when I learned that the State of Florida is currently running a $28 million clinical trial at the University of South Florida – a gold-standard, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study on hyperbaric oxygen therapy for veterans with traumatic brain injury – and that no one in my circle had ever heard of it, I had one question:
Who decided these families didn’t need to know?
The Speaker’s Initiative: How One State Cut Through the Tape
Here is what most Floridians don’t know, because the media hasn’t bothered to tell them.
In 2019, then-State Representative Paul Renner, a retired Naval officer, authored and passed HB 501, creating a pilot program that made Florida one of the first states to fund alternative therapies for veterans with TBI and PTSD: hyperbaric oxygen therapy, equine therapy, music therapy, accelerated resolution therapy, and service animal training.
That pilot worked. Veterans improved. So Renner, as then Speaker of the Florida House, went bigger. He championed a $28 million appropriation to fund the most rigorous HBOT clinical trial ever conducted on veterans with TBI, housed at USF Health under Dr. Harry van Loveren, chair of Neurosurgery and Brain Repair.
This was not a federal program. This was not the VA bureaucracy. This was a Speaker’s Initiative. One man in state leadership using his position to bypass the red tape, the pharmaceutical gatekeepers, and the institutional inertia that keeps veterans on pills instead of exploring treatments that might actually heal brain wounds.
The evidence is already compelling:
- Improvements in anxiety, sleep, and sense of smell – 2025 double-blind randomized trial published in Nature
- Reduced PTSD symptoms and post-concussive symptoms – pooled analysis of four Department of Defense studies (254 veterans)
- Improved neurocognitive function in 21 of 25 measures – multi-center National Brain Injury Rescue and Rehabilitation Project, with zero adverse events
- Over 31,000 patients treated – including 12,000+ veterans and 700 Special Operations warriors – through the TreatNOW Coalition, with consistent documented results over more than a decade
The USF trial exists because the pilot data was strong enough to justify a $28 million gold-standard study – not because we’re starting from zero.
What the Trial Actually Offers
The USF Health HBOT trial is actively enrolling veterans and active-duty service members with diagnosed mild-to-moderate TBI. Participants receive, at zero cost:
- 40 hyperbaric oxygen therapy sessions at 2.0 atmospheres absolute
- Comprehensive neurobehavioral and cognitive assessments
- Blood work tracking inflammation biomarkers
- Optional EEG, sleep monitoring, and stool sampling
- A participation stipend
The entire HBOT center staff are veterans themselves. Their motto is “Veterans helping veterans.” This is not a VA subcontract handed to some Beltway contractor. This is former service members running chambers for their own.
The Silence Is the Scandal
I have told the women in my life about this trial. My girlfriends. Mothers of the young men I’ve watched grow up. Their sons are struggling. Marriages are disintegrating. They had no idea this trial existed.
Not one of them had heard of it.
Meanwhile, the VA keeps writing scripts. The pharmaceutical industry keeps cashing checks. And the media in this state – the same media that can recite Byron Donalds’ polling margins from memory – cannot seem to find column space for a $28 million veterans’ health initiative that could change the standard of care for brain-injured service members nationwide.
There is no patent on oxygen. No pharma rep is dropping off HBOT samples at the VA clinic. No lobbyist is taking a congressman to dinner to push hyperbaric chambers. And so the silence continues, and the suicides continue, the marriages continue to crumble, families continue to disintegrate, and the young men I’ve known since they were children keep burying friends who never knew there was another option.
What You Can Do
If you are a veteran or active-duty service member in Florida with a diagnosed TBI – or if you love someone who is:
Visit hbot.usf.edu and complete the interest form. The treatment is free. The testing is free. The trial is enrolling now.
If you are a journalist in this state: cover this. Not as a political story – as a human story. Because while your newsroom debates whether a gubernatorial debate is worth airtime, somewhere in Florida a young man is putting on a suit to bury another friend.
The people who love him deserved to know this existed before that suit came out of the closet again.
The young man I’ve known since grade school is still here. He’s still fighting. Paul Renner’s initiative means there is something on the table besides another prescription and another funeral. That matters. Florida deserves a governor who doesn’t wait for permission to do the right thing. We already know Paul Renner won’t wait. Thank you, Speaker Renner.
Saga Stevin August 3, 2026 Proud daughter of a veteran. I’ve lived in Florida long enough to see a parade of politicians who talk about their service like a costume they put on for election season. Paul Renner is the first one I’ve seen who put his power on the line for the men and women who put their lives on the line for us. That’s not a talking point. That’s a $28 million receipt.