All Articles by Lindsey Barton Straus, JD

The findings of a new study showing that delayed reporting of concussion is linked to a much longer recovery could be used to convince athletes that it is in their interest and that of their team to immediately report concussion symptoms.

Athletic trainers need to take a more public health approach to injury prevention by expanding their professional focus from the teams and athletes they work with at their institutions to all physically active individuals, urged speakers at the National Athletic Trainers' Association's 2016 Clinical Symposia and AT Expo.

New rules and recommendations regarding heading in youth soccer issued in November 2015 by a number of national and California soccer organizations have generated significant controversy, with some criticizing the rules as going too far and some as not going far enough. Not surprisingly, Dr. Frank Webbe, a prominent researcher on the subject of heading in soccer and a longtime supporter of a ban on heading in soccer below age 14, favors the new rules, despite the lack of data to establish their effectiveness.

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.

Engaging in a 5-minute helmetless tackling drill twice a week during pre-season football and once a week during the season reduced by almost a third the frequency of impacts to the head over the course of a single season, reports a groundbreaking new study.

Three out of ten U.S. high schools still do not currently have any access to ATs, but the number of high schools with AT access has doubled in the last twenty years to 70 percent, providing coverage to 86% of all high school athletes.

Early sports specialization has been increasingly viewed as increasing an athlete's chances of achieving elite status, but has raised significant concerns, both as to whether it actually accomplishes that objective, and whether it carries with it an increased risk for sports-related injuries. A quartet of research papers explore various aspects of the issue.

High school cheerleaders don't get injured as often as athletes in other sports, but, when they do, the injuries are more serious, finds a first-of-its-kind study published in the journal Pediatrics.

Aerobic therapy (AT) may lessen the symptoms experienced by children and adolescents suffering from post-concussion syndrome and allow them to return to baseline, report researchers in a paper presented at the American Academy of Pediatrics National Conference and Exhibition in October 2015 in Washington, D.C.

Athletic directors at the thirty percent of U.S. high schools lacking access to athletic trainers identify lack of AD hiring authority, budgetary constraints and non-budget factors, including rural location, misconceptions about an AT's role, and community interference, as barriers to hiring athletic trainers, a new study published in the Journal of Athletic Training reveals.