Concussions and kids: What to know and when to act
Concussions are massively underreported in the United States. Even when they are reported, some people—including doctors—aren’t sure how to treat them.
To address those problems, Piya Sorcar, TeachAids CEO and Stanford Adjunct Professor, set out to design a concussion education program to encourage young people to seek help for their injuries and to inform parents, athletes, coaches, and medical professionals about proper treatment and care.
She brought in 100 scientific experts to guide the curriculum. She also brought in young people. Lots of them. Middle schoolers and high schoolers but also Stanford students and athletes. As she told School’s In co-hosts Denise Pope, senior lecturer at Stanford Graduate School of Education (GSE), and GSE Dean Dan Schwartz, for the content to be effective, it must be authentic.
“The kids . . . would almost immediately toss out our scripts, and they would redo the language,” says Sorcar, the founder and chief executive officer of TeachAids, a health education provider. “It really needed to feel like it was something that was made for them, by them.”
The resulting concussion-education products—known as CrashCourse—include a choose-your-own adventure football game simulation, a virtual reality tour of the brain, and real-life concussion stories.
Used by U.S. Olympic and Paralympic governing bodies, the National Council of Youth Sports, several states, and hundreds of hospitals and clinics across the U.S., the content is remarkably effective, according to Sorcar’s colleague at TeachAids, Dr. Daniel Daneshvar, chief of brain injury rehabilitation at Mass General Brigham. In a study in North Carolina, where tens of thousands of high school athletes were required to participate in the program, Daneshvar found that choices students made in the football simulation were “indicative of someone’s likelihood of reporting a concussion in the real world.”
Sorcar says education is key to preventing further injuries. “Educate yourself . . . then . . . educate the kids,” she says. “Have a discussion with the kids about who they can go to for help and just give that a label so that, when something happens, they can find someone that’s trusted because they’ve already had that discussion.”
