This week's best of MomsTeam.com, a website devoted to health and safety issues in youth sports:
- Traumatic brain injuries in youth sports will be the focus of a two-year initiative called Protecting Athletes and Sports Safety, to be spearheaded by the National Council on Youth Sports Safety, a panel of more than 20 of the nation's top youth sports safety experts, including MomsTeam Institute executive director Brooke de Lench, who were charged this week by Dr. David Satcher, former U.S. Surgeon General and Director of the Satcher Health Leadership Institute at Morehouse School of Medicine, with the development of best practices on concussion safety.
- The National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment board of directors has approved the development of a revised football helmet standard that will require helmets to limit certain concussion causing forces. NOCSAE’s announcement that new helmet standards will be presented at its meeting in June for possible implementation as early as September 2015 comes amid criticism of the group for moving too slowly to adopt more stringent certification standards in the wake of the ongoing concussion crisis in football.
- Female soccer players playing elite or select soccer before high school sustain concussions at a rate four times higher than their high school and college counterparts, most continue to play despite experiencing symptoms and less than half sought medical attention, a new study finds. As MomsTeam Senior Editor Lindsay Barton reported, the high percentage of athletes reporting that they continued playing despite experiencing concussion symptoms in the study, believed to be the first of its kind to track concussions in girls' soccer below high school, while similar to the rates reported in other studies, is concerning.
- As was the case with the two-hour premiere of "Friday Night Tykes" on the Esquire Network, this week's episode continues to be "must see" television for youth football parents, according to Brooke de Lench, if for no other reason than its educational value. In her continuing series of FNT blogs, de Lench explored some of the safety issues the show raises, with links to MomsTeam content for further reading.
- Sport-related concussion sustained in early life can have long-term implications for brain health and cognitive and sensory function, find two new studies. Using sensitive measures of brain function, researchers at the University of Michigan and University of Illinois found that young adults in their twenties with a history of concussions before the age of 18 not only had chronically impaired higher-order neurocognitive function, but that lower-level sensory and perceptual processing was also negatively affected compared to those without a concussion history. As Lindsay Barton reported, it remains to be seen whether the subtle deficits detected in brain activity linked to concussion history will impact the day-to-day functioning of former athletes as they age.
-- MomsTeam.com and NFL Evolution
