Month: June 2015

Minutes From First Illinois Advisory Council on Player Safety

Dustin Fink2 Comments

PSPHlogo“Welcome to a historic event.” Is how Associate Executive Director, Kurt Gibson opened the first meeting of its kind in Illinois and for the Illinois High School Association (IHSA). With the vast majority of the Council present it did not take long for all of us to get to “work”.

The Council (which we shortened to PSAC – Player Safety Advisory Council) dove right into the meat of the issues surrounding sports and player safety. Rather than giving a play-by-play I will let you read the minutes from the meeting (LINK HERE);

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MINUTES OF THE PLAY SMART. PLAY HARD PLAYER SAFETY ADVISORY COUNCIL MEETING June 9, 2015

The Play Smart. Play Hard Player Safety Advisory Council met at the IHSA office in Bloomington, Illinois on Tuesday, June 9, 2015, beginning at 10:00 a.m. Committee members present were Dustin Fink, Sara Flanigan, Tory Lindley, Dennis Piron, and Cole Steward. Also in attendance were Associate Executive Director Kurt Gibson; Assistant Executive Director Matt Troha; and guest, Sports Medicine Advisory Committee member Greg Gaa. Not present were members Tregg Duerson, Senator Napoleon Harris, and Allison Hieb.

ITEMS OF GENERAL DISCUSSION:

1. IHSA administrators Kurt Gibson and Matt Troha welcomed the council to the first meeting of the Play Smart. Play Hard Player Safety Advisory Council.

2. The council reviewed its purpose of monitoring current IHSA programs and initiatives, identifying new areas to advance player safety, and helping communicate the Play Smart. Play Hard vision.

3. The council reviewed the following materials from the IHSA’s Sports Medicine Advisory Committee (SMAC): ● minutes of the committee’s April 2015 meeting ● recommendations made by IHSA’s Football and SMAC regarding football contact ● Managing Heat/Humidity Policy recommendation The council’s feedback on the football contact and Heat Policy recommendations are listed below under items.

4. The council discussed Senate Bill 07, which is currently awaiting signature from Governor Rauner. Among other things, SB 07 creates a Concussion Oversight Team in schools to monitor Return to Play and Return to Learn for student-athletes who have sustained a concussion, requires education on concussions and symptoms for coaches and athletic officials, and requires schools to develop school-specific Emergency Action Plans (EAP’s) to address serious injuries that may occur on campus.

5. The council heard reports from Allison Hieb and Cole Steward, the two student members of the council, on concussion from the perspective of student-athletes. Both students shared the perspective of how their schools have addressed concussion with their student-athletes on both the individual and team level. As a part of that discussion, the council suggested that the IHSA consider developing some kind of post-video assessment be created for students to complete. Additionally, the council thought it may be worthwhile for the IHSA to register and track student-athletes from a sports medicine perspective. IHSA staff indicated they would begin the process by working on some kind of checklist that all member schools can utilize.

6. In reviewing the football recommendations made by the IHSA Football and Sports Medicine Advisory Committees, the council expressed their desire to see the IHSA be bolder with its recommendations concerning the amounts of full contact Continue reading →

Triumph Over Trauma

Dustin Fink1 Comment

In the beginning it was hard to find a lot of people to share real world examples of what I was trying to describe here on the blog. It is one thing to have the knowledge and experience but entirely another to parse that down to something people can grasp and understand.

Luckily I happened across a great person and advocate that was able and willing to share some stories that made this blog a little more personable. Her name is Tracy Yatsko and she is definitely not just a face in the crowd.

Recently she has joined the blog space with her very own called “Triumph over Trauma” and as she describes in her tag line;

Triumph Over Trauma is a website/blog devoted to concussion victims, survivors, and their families to hopefully lead them into the right direction of recovery, give them hope through stories of others who have struggled yet triumphed, and give them the one thing the concussion community lacks or can’t find: Support.

As mentioned she has been featured here at The Concussion Blog with a wonderfully written story about her from one time contributor John Gonoude and one of her first PSA’s about concussions.

If you have the time you should head over to her blog and see if you can help in any way!

May Mailbag

Dustin Fink5 Comments

As the sports season winds down at the high school I am finally getting to the various emails I have received. I do truly enjoy the many stories and questions I get here, often times they are very learned for me; which translates to more information for you the reader.

I picked out one such email and gained permission to reprint it here. The sole purpose of this email is to get feedback about the return to learn aspect of concussions. Tom would like you to give it a read and make comments below.

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Return To Learn in the High School

I am an athletic trainer in a high school in the north suburbs of Chicago. We have a concussion program in place and see about 80 concussion a year in our athletics. I am fortunate to have some control over the return to learn side of concussions in my school. I have found that this is essential in order to properly manage a concussion. I find when physicians only see an athlete once and set accommodations for a determined amount of time, it does a disservice. The same is true if the time between physician evaluations is too long, especially when kids are kept out of school for long periods of time. I find many concussion students don’t need to be out of school, and those that do usually have their symptoms decrease significantly within 1-3 days.  Many times concussions progress rapidly and Continue reading →

An Understudied Area of TBI

Dustin Fink1 Comment

Although this blog primarily focuses on mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) – concussion – and the ramifications on adolescents there are many segments of society that deal with brain injury. The most severe of this is traumatic brain injury (TBI); the difference at its basics is that there is actual physical findings of damage to the brain itself – a bleed, skull fracture, hematoma, etc. I am sure there may be a better way to put it but for the sake of being simple that is the difference.

The morbidity rate of TBI is extremely high and thusly we should be very cognizant of this.

A silent portion of the TBI problem comes from domestic abuse, silent because many of the suffers of the brain injury often don’t speak up. There are no actual numbers on this due to the many reasons one would not report incidents. Take car accident TBI’s for example, we have a very definitive number on them because most if not all are seen in emergency rooms but the silence in the domestic abuse realm makes us guess, at best.

This looks to change with a new study on this, below is the press release of a first-of-its-kind;

Sojourner Center Launches First-of-its-Kind Effort to Study Link Between Domestic Violence and Traumatic Brain Injury

Sojourner BRAIN Program to develop innovative screening, deliver treatment and share best practices

 

PHOENIX – Sojourner Center, one of the largest and longest running domestic violence shelters in the United States, announced plans to develop the first world-class program dedicated to the analysis and treatment of traumatic brain injury (TBI) in women and children living with domestic violence, a largely unrecognized public health issue.

With its Phoenix-based Continue reading →