Concussion awareness on campus

By David Goldstein ’17

As someone who has endured multiple concussions, has founded and continued to manage a comprehensive Countywide Concussion Care program, and has helped pass youth concussion legislation in Florida, I saw an immense amount of value in the wise words and lessons that were shared at the Concussions in Youth Sports Discussion on Sept. 26, 2014. Annegret Dettwiler-Danspeckgruber of the Princeton Neuroscience Institute chaired the event along with the Brain Injury Alliance of New Jersey; panelists included professional Pro Football Hall of Famer Harry Carson, ESPN Magazine writer and League of Denial contributor Peter Keating, Columbia University Medical Center expert James Noble and University professor of economics Uwe E. Reinhardt. I learned a tremendous amount from this forum and am sure that all those sitting in the packed auditorium could say the same. Following the panel, I had a couple of specific thoughts about concussions in youth athletics and on our campus.

The University has a tremendous opportunity to be a leader in how academic institutions handle concussion management. Different departments — academic, social and health-related — work together across many spheres of life to give University students a comprehensive and well-rounded experience. If the Office of the Dean of the College, University Health Services, the Department of Athletics, for instance, worked in a similarly integrated manner to create a modernized support system for concussion management, it would greatly benefit students both athletically and academically by coordinating their recovery in a way that reduces stress, keeps academic work at a pace that is sustainable for an injured athlete, gets athletes back into competition in a safe and efficient way, and allows students then to return to their full capacity to all of their activities. Additionally, the University will be admired by its peers for taking such a proactive stance on this critical issue. While individual professors do work with concussed students to make individual arrangements to ease the academic workload, it would be essential to establish a more formal process at the University to allow concussed students to spread out their workload and exams so that they have other options aside from taking a full-year leave from school.

The University does have policies to allow for extensions for papers in the case of head injuries, but there is room for more progress to be made in terms of accommodating injured student-athletes. One measure that the University could take would be to allow concussed students to reschedule exams for a later date, once their symptoms have subsided, so that they do not have to take a full-year leave from school. The University’s willingness to host the discussion was a positive step toward spreading concussion awareness management. A great next step would be to create concussion management policies, with the help of experts such as the panelists, to enable the University to take the lead in giving students the support they need.

Handling concussions is one problem, but another is preventing them by altering the culture in youth sports. Every adult in a youth athlete’s life plays a role in his or her protection from concussions. Every person involved in youth athletics — parents, researchers, coaches, clinicians, educators, athletic trainers, athletic directors, doctors and referees — is responsible for ensuring that young athletes in the present and future are protected. It takes a total team effort to ensure that kids are properly educated, diagnosed and rehabilitated in the proper manner. Every adult involved in youth athletics should have a proper education and understand the risks of keeping young athletes on the field after suffering a brain injury. It should also be mentioned that it is not the players who are pushing themselves to return to play, but often the coaches and parents who push them. It therefore seems to be of great importance to ensure that coaches and parents are aware of these risks because of the critical role they play in the lives of young athletes. The Department of Athletics puts a premium on safety and concussion prevention, but this level of awareness should be consistent throughout the entire school.

Lastly, there must be a better way to find concussion specialists to help with treatment. When I suffered my most recent concussion, it took me months to find local doctors who treated concussions on a consistent basis with clinics devoted specifically to managing these injuries. It turned out that the doctors who helped me finally feel normal again after four months of suffering worked for the university three minutes from my house, but I had no way of knowing this without searching for several months. Over the past couple of years, I have heard countless stories of injured young athletes, including several University students, not knowing where to go for help. Young athletes with brain injuries must see specialists to aid them in their recovery, and yet these specialists are presently too hard to identify.

I propose that there be a free online database that young athletes can use to quickly look up local concussion specialists. This measure would eliminate large amounts of time during which injured young athletes unnecessarily suffer. If the University could create such a database as a resource for its students here and become part of the effort to develop a similar contact list on a broader scale, it would be providing an essential service to its student body and beyond.

In addition to listening to the panelists, I also had the honor of participating in the discussion as a representative of Countywide Concussion Care and as the voice of a youth athlete who has suffered concussions. My contribution was well received by both the panelists and the audience, and it was a true honor to play a part in such an amazing event. My appreciation for this event is immense because it spread so much useful knowledge about a critical issue to which I relate personally. Hopefully more panels such as this one occur in the future at the University and more progress is made in terms of protecting young athletes from brain injuries.