News & Studies

Are men who played high school football in Minnesota in the twenty-five years after World War II at increased risk of later developing dementia, Parkinson's or ALS compared with non-football playing high school males? Not according to two studies by researchers at the Mayo Clinic.

A study by researchers at Boston University finding that athletes who were less than 12 years old at the time of their first exposure to tackle football had more behavioral and cognitive problems later in life than those whose age of first exposure to the sport was later has, predictably, garnered a great deal of attention from the mainstream media. In the interest of balanced and objective reporting, we asked a number of researchers and clinicians to review and comment on the study. Here's what they told us.

Despite widespread media coverage and speculation regarding the late-life or post-retirement risks of cognitive impairment in athletes who engaged in sports involving repetitive blows to the head and high concussion risk, and assertions that CTE causes them to be at high risk of suicide, there have been virtually no peer-reviewed, well-designed scientific studies that establish, much less quantify, such risks.

Brooke de Lench, Executive Director of MomsTeam Institute, Inc., and Jim MacDonald, M.D., M.P.H., a member of the MomsTeam Board of Directors, and a sports medicine physician at Nationwide Children's Hospital presented MomsTeam's Smart Teams Play Safe concussion risk reduction program at the International Olympic Committee's World Conference On Prevention of Injury and Illness in Sport in Monaco.

MomsTEAM Institute Executive Director Brooke de Lench and Senior Editor and Director of Research Lindsey Barton Straus accepted the award of an NCAA-Department of Defense Mind Matters Challenge education grant during a luncheon at the NCAA national headquarters in Indianapolis.

Three attorneys - a law professor, a high school interscholastic sports commissioner, and a practicing attorney with a speciality in sports law - discuss the impact of the recent settlement by Pop Warner of a suit involving a 13-year player rendered a quadriplegic after a helmet-to-helmet collision.