All Articles by Brooke de Lench

Parents should have the right to expect, if their child is playing contact or collision sports, that he or she undergo pre-season baseline and post-injury neuropsychological testing as the current consensus statement on concussions recommends for athletes in such sport, regardless of age or competitive level.

MomsTEAM has been advocating for years that every U.S. high school should have an athletic trainer on staff, given their key role in assessing and treating sports injuries, including concussions, and in making return to play decisions. While only 60-65% of schools have an AT, recent statistics suggest that fully 85-90% of high school athletes are now working with ATs on a daily basis.

The sad fact, and what makes it sometimes hard for parents to truly believe that programs are taking concussions seriously, is that many of the sports programs in which their children participate do not follow any set of return-to-play guidelines, and if they do follow guidelines, they are too liberal in terms of same-day return-to-play (RTP). Thus, the third point in the Concussion Bill of Rights for parents is that the athletic director or administrator, coach, athletic trainer and team doctor have, at the very least, agreed upon and adopted a philosophy for grading and managing concussions before the start of the season which prohibits players who experience concussion signs or symptoms from returning to the same game or practice, and use it consistently during the season, regardless of the athlete or circumstances surrounding the injury.

Because coaches have the strongest influence on a student-athlete's decision to report a concussion, more concussion education of coaches, including the need to report concussions, however, minor, and the creation of a safe reporting environment are critical, experts say, to combating chronic underreporting of concussion.

Because one of the keys to keeping athletes safe when it comes to concussion is education, a concussion education and safety meeting should be held for parents and athletes should be held before every season. Ideally, the meeting should include presentations by medical doctors, former athletes, and parents of concussed current or former athletes.

In her keynote address to the 2nd Annual Sports Concussion Summit in Marina del Ray, California MomsTeam.com founder Brooke de Lench offered suggestions on how parents, coaches, officials, administrators, athletic trainers, clinician, current or former professional athlete, and sports safety equipment manufacturer, could work together as a team to protect the nation's children against the serious, life-altering consequences of concussions.

Girls have higher concussion rates in sports like soccer and basketball than boys, but whether they experience greater levels of acute, postconcussive neurocognitive impairment remains unclear, even after extensive research.