Prevention (Epidemiology)

Who sustains concussions, and what can be done to prevent concussions from occurring in the first place?

DEVELOPMENT OF SURVEILLANCE PROGRAM

  • Despite most previous research having been focused on individuals identified either at hospitals (i.e., emergency departments) or in athletic settings, the majority of concussions do not come to hospital and occur outside of sports. The ICRP plan calls for the development of a world-class injury surveillance program that extends into the broader Calgary community to involve community agencies, schools, primary care providers, and other institutions and individuals involved in the identification of concussion. 
  • The surveillance program will allow us to detect the broader population of concussions in the greater Calgary area, and target our education and outreach efforts; it will directly engage the community in the ICRP, while simultaneously providing a critical pipeline for research recruitment.

DEVELOPMENT OF REGISTRY

  • In addition to identifying concussions, we also want to be able to track them across time and collect a standard set of information about them. Thus, the surveillance program will be combined with the creation of a Calgary concussion patient registry. The patient registry will facilitate the collection of information about concussion that can be used for multiple research purposes: to recruit patients for clinical trials; to learn about factors associated with concussion; to monitor concussion outcomes; and to identify best practices in clinical care through studies of comparative effectiveness

RECENT PUBLICATIONS:

Physical activity and concussion risk in youth ice hockey players: pooled prospective injury surveillance cohorts from Canada.

Blake TA, Doyle-Baker PK, Brooks BL,Palacios-DerflingherL, Emery CA.

BMJ Open. 2018 Sep 4;8(9):e022735. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2018-022735.

 

Injury prevention in kids' adventure and extreme sports: future directions.

Emery CA.

Res Sports Med. 2018;26(sup1):199-211. doi: 10.1080/15438627.2018.1452239. Review.

 

Are Rule Changes the Low-Hanging Fruit for Concussion Prevention in Youth Sport?

Emery CA, Black AM.

JAMA Pediatr. 2019 Feb 18. doi: 10.1001/jamapediatrics.2018.5498. [Epub ahead of print] No abstract available.

 

Concussion Burden, Recovery, and Risk Factors in Elite Youth Ice Hockey Players.

Schneider KJ, Nettel-Aguirre A, Palacios-Derflingher L, Mrazik M, Brooks BL, Woollings K, Blake T, McKay C, Lebrun C, Barlow K, Taylor K, Lemke N, Meeuwisse WH,Emery CA.

Clin J Sport Med. 2018 Oct 8. doi: 10.1097/JSM.0000000000000673. [Epub ahead of print]