New campaign Blackout for Brain Injury is set to mark this year's national awareness week and raise the profile of the often-invisible injury.
Brain Injury New Zealand president and Hawke's Bay Brain Injury Association chairman Brett Morris said the national campaign was purposed to better inform the community about brain injuries and the challenges that come with them.
"The problem with brain injuries is that they're invisible most of the time so you don't know someone has a brain injury and you may well put down their behaviour to a bad or crazy person.
"You see someone acting strangely and you automatically assume that's just the way they are rather than a brain injury being the cause."
Every 15 minutes a New Zealander sustained a traumatic brain injury (TBI) and they often went unrecognised for a period of time as almost a third of people didn't seek medical immediate medical attention, he said.