Litigation

New legislation introduced in Senate to protect high school athletes with concussions

By Michael Kaplen

The movement to insure the safety of high school athletes who may have sustained a concussion has received a boost under legislation introduced yesterday in the United States Senate.

U.S. Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) introduced legislation in the Senate to create a grant program that would help ensure proper prevention, diagnosis and treatment of sports-related concussions in U.S. high schools and middle schools. The Concussion Treatment and Care Tools (ConTACT) Act establishes a five year grant program, authorized at $5 million for the first year, to be distributed to states to implement proven concussion management strategies.

The legislation was previously introduced in the House of Representatives by Rep. Bill Pascrell who is co-chair of the traumatic brain injury congressional task force.

Under the legislation, grants would be awarded to states to implement best practices in concussion management for school-sponsored sports and fund schools? implementation of baseline and post-concussion neuropsychological testing technologies.  Best practices would be developed by a conference of medical, athletic, and education stakeholders and will be used to model grant guidelines.

Hopefully, this guidelines that are implemented will be far reaching and require any athlete who has sustained a concussion or a suspected concussion from returning to play in that game and any subsequent game until all signs and symptoms of a concussion resolve. This included the subtle symptoms that were omitted from recent changes in concussion policy by the N.F.L.

Full post as published by Brain Injury News and Information on December 05, 2009 (boomark / email).