BIAIA Press Release: Iowa Concussion Awareness Month starts with “Ahead of the Game” conference August 10

On Thursday, August 3, Governor Kim Reynolds signed a proclamation designating August as Concussion Awareness Month in Iowa, acknowledging a critical need statewide for education and understanding on the topic of concussion, a common form of brain injury.

As fall sports get underway in schools and clubs across Iowa, recent research released about the long-term effects of concussion in athletes’ brains has a lot of people worried about their kids’ safety as they take to the field. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that as many as 3.8 million sports and recreation-related concussions occur in the U.S. each year; however, when concussions are properly recognized and managed within the first few weeks after injury, most individuals recover without lingering symptoms.

Coinciding with Concussion Awareness Month and in partnership with the Iowa Department of Public Health, the Governor’s Advisory Council on Brain Injury, and the Iowa Department of Education, the Brain Injury Alliance of Iowa (BIAIA) will host the first annual “Ahead of the Game” Iowa Concussion Conference on August 10, 2017, launching an ongoing statewide education initiative to provide consistent, reliable, evidence-based information about concussion and other brain injury to Iowa’s coaches and educators, as well as to students and their parents and guardians.

“Our ultimate goal is to prevent concussions—which are relatively mild brain injuries—from developing into long-lasting, more serious problems,” said Geoffrey Lauer, executive director of BIAIA, “We want all the adults in a young person’s life to know how to recognize concussion when it happens, and understand the roles they play in protecting the child from long-term brain damage–or even death. The key is making sure they have the most up-to-date information about concussion, and that they know about safe procedures for a gradual return to normal activity after an injury.”

At the end of July, the state Departments of Public Health and Education issued new expanded guidelines for dealing with students who may have concussions. Maggie Ferguson, Brain Injury and Disability Program Manager for the Department of Public Health, says the new expanded guidelines are applicable to all students.

“The focus has previously been on the student athlete, but we want to highlight the fact that these kids are students first. We need to be looking at returning them to the classroom before returning them to the playing field,” Ferguson explains. She says the new concussion guidelines cover students of any age.

“And it’s not just high school athletes,” says Ferguson, who will also speak at the conference, “but any student regardless of their age and affiliation with sports. Because they might get hurt on the playground, riding their bike at home, they could be involved in car crash.” Ferguson says they are using a model developed in Colorado called REAP.

“Ahead of the Game” conference attendees—family, coaches, school nurses, teachers, and medical and brain-injury professionals—will learn about the REAP (Reduce/Remove • Educate • Accommodate • Pace) protocol for concussion management, which was developed in Colorado and has been recognized internationally as an optimal model for maximizing positive outcomes for youth athletes. While the model was developed with athletes in mind, these principles of concussion management may be universally applied as best practices.

REAP was originally developed in response to tragedy, when a high-school freshman football player at Grandview High School in Aurora, Colorado, collapsed on the field and died after returning to play too soon after a brain injury. After the devastating loss, attributed to “Second Impact Syndrome,” Dr. Karen McAvoy, the school psychologist at Grandview, conducted a four-year research study in consultation with medical and school professionals and created REAP with the hope of preventing such tragedies through education.

McAvoy now serves as the head of the Youth Sports Medicine Institute’s Center for Concussion, and will be the keynote speaker at the “Ahead of the Game” conference.

The conference will take place at the Sheraton Hotel and conference center in West Des Moines, bringing together members of the four critical teams—family, medical, academic, and athletic—and helping them to understand their respective roles in concussion recognition and recovery. The initial statewide conference on August 10 will be followed up by regional training events across the state, as well as distribution of a detailed REAP manual to all Iowa schools and trauma centers during the coming academic year.