UPFRONT | Roundup RESEARCH Take 5 Researchers aim to change athletes’ perception, reporting of concussions University of Georgia researchers are announcing a study addressing ways to reduce the stigma surround-ing concussions, an injury so commonly associated with football. Funded by a three-year, $400,000-grant from the NCAA and the U.S. Depart-ment of Defense, Julianne Schmidt, an assistant profes-sor in the UGA College of Education’s kinesiology de-partment, and Welch Suggs, an associate professor in the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, are creating intervention methods to help athletes seek assistance after they have suffered a concussion. “The goal is to change the culture in sport to one of reporting rather than one of concealing,” said Schmidt, who has led several studies involving concussions and the recovery process associ-ated with them. Suggs, who studies how media images affect individ-ual attitudes about health and sports issues, will help examine how in-person sem-inars and multimedia pres-entations affect athletes’ atti-tudes toward reporting concussions. “The problem is, athletes are unwilling to report con-cussions because they’re worried about compromis-ing their status on the team,” he said. “We’re trying to work with the athletes and the people surrounding them to make concussion report-ing less of a threat.” A survey will be con-ducted to determine athletes’ 6 Canadian Chiropractor April 2016 For more stories on research visit canadianchiropractor.ca Would choose to see a chiropractor first for neck and back pain Age group who are more likely to have been to a chiropractor www.canadianchiropractor.ca Illustration: Brian Fray knowledge and attitudes to-ward concussions, and the results will be used to create an intervention strategy de-livered in multiple platforms. Parents and coaches will be involved in the process as well, which will help rein-force among the athletes the importance of reporting a concussion. While there are no military participants in the research, the Depart-ment of Defense plans to use the study to address similar concussion-reporting issues among soldiers. The research team also includes Ron Courson, di-rector of sports medicine for the UGA Athletic Depart-ment; Fred Reifsteck, UGA’s head team physician; coaches and athletes at Division II and III schools in Georgia; and Laura Bierema, associ-ate dean for academic programs in the College of Education. Schmidt said at the end of the study the team plans to present guidelines to be dis-tributed throughout the NCAA to encourage report-ing concussions derived from scientific evidence. This dives deeper than current concussion information given to athletes, which fo-cuses on simply knowing the facts about a concussion. This new program would address questions elite stu-dent athletes ask, such as, “What will my parents think?” and “What will my coaches think?” NUMBER CRUNCHING Patient poll Excerpts from the recent Gallup report commissioned by Palmer College of Chiropractic on Americans’ perceptions of chiropractic. 33.6 61% Annual number of American adults seeking chiropractic care million believe chiropractors are effective for neck and back pain treatment 29% 35+
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