Abstract
It is a tremendous honor to present this remarkable group of articles covering a wide range of important topics related to traumatic brain injury.
I'd like to draw special attention to the article by Dr. Chrisman and colleagues entitled “Effectiveness of an Education Platform (GoHuddle) for Increasing Likelihood of Coach Concussion Communication with Athletes.” Substantial effort has gone into educating athletes and athletic medical personnel, but educating coaches may very well be a critical new frontier in concussion care. In this article, the authors present the development and testing of a web-based concussion education platform for collegiate sports coaches. They found that after having access to the platform, coaches reported being more likely to discuss concussion symptom reporting with their teams and stronger belief in the efficacy of such discussions. However, the coaches did not express any change in their likelihood of putting pressure on medical staff to return athletes to play as soon as possible. Clearly this is an important step forward, but a great deal of work needs to be done in the field. It would be very exciting to see randomized, controlled trials of coaching behaviors following implementation of specific educational approaches versus “coaching as usual.” In addition to surveys of coaches, outcomes derived from athletic medical staff and players themselves would be of tremendous value. Optimistically, the field will find an evidence-based approach to balance the risk of harm from concussion with the joy of sports.