Grant: CIHR Fellowship

Concussions are brain injuries suffered by over 1.5 million North American youth each year. As an estimated 64% of youth concussions are suffered during sport, there is a need for identifying and implementing prevention strategies. Head impacts commonly occur in many collision-based (e.g., tackle football, ice hockey) and contact-based (e.g., soccer) sports. It is estimated that 90% of concussions result from impact to the head, face, or neck. Although significant efforts have been made across multiple sports to prevent concussions via policy change (e.g., prohibiting body checking in ice hockey), training strategies (e.g., limiting contact practices in tackle football), and equipment (e.g., mouthguard use), the underlying concern is head impacts. As not all head impacts will result in concussion, and the relationship between summative head impacts and concussion vulnerability is not well understood, it is indeed critical to further examine head impact prevention across sports. Current methods for evaluating primary prevention strategies include injury surveillance, video analysis of gameplay using predefined criteria, and player-instrumented wearable sensors. Unfortunately, literature in youth sport typically uses each method in isolation, limiting a comprehensive understanding of the head impact and concussion context in sport. Therefore, to address this considerable gap, the proposed work will examine injury surveillance, player instrumented mouthguard accelerometry, and video analysis of games and practices across youth (ages 9-18) tackle football, ice hockey, and soccer within Western North Carolina (United States, 2025-2028). This comprehensive approach will allow for a rigorous examination of the relationship between head impact rates and magnitudes with concussion during play and context-specific information for head impacts (e.g., in-play situation, ball carrier) in youth sport to create data-driven concussion and head impact prevention strategies.