Editorials

The ninth right of parents under the Parent's Concussion Bill of Rights is the right to expect that their child's coach and the officials working games have been trained in basic safety and emergency procedures. Laws should be enacted in every state modeled on "Will's Bill," the 2007 Texas law named after Will Benson, the 17-year old Texas football player who died after collapsing during a game, requiring that every high school coach and official receive such training.

Delay in treatment of a brain injury suffered by a player in a football game can be critical. The eighth right of parents under the Parent's Concussion Bill of Rights is therefore the right to expect that an ambulance and paramedics are present at all high school football games, and, if they are not, procedures are in place on how to activate the school's emergency medical plan by calling 911.

Most football helmets currently in use do little if anything to protect brains from the forces that cause concussions, a fact that most parents and athletes don't know. An estimated half of all football helmets in use at the high school level have either been improperly reconditioned, have foam padding that has degraded over time, or fit poorly. Only about one in five helmets is new. Technological advances in helmet design, while they are not going to make concussions in football a thing of the past, hold out at least the promise of being able to significantly reduce the number of concussions. The seventh right of parents under the Parent's Concussion Bill of Rights is the right to know that the helmet their child is using is safe.

Too often, parents are in the dark about the important role they play in their child's recovery from concussion and the all-important decision on when it is safe for their child to return to the playing field. The sixth right of parents under the Parent's Concussion Bill of Rights is therefore the right to receive written notice of injuries suffered by their child and to provide written consent before their child is allowed to return to play.

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.