By Kirbi Campbell

The issue of concussions from sports is not a new phenomenon, but rather we are gradually learning more and more of what happens 15 years down the road after two line men crash head on into one another. This has become such a large fear and issue among all levels of sports as new research and studies have come out about how easy it is to get a concussion along with what the long term affects of them actually are.

Since 2014, the NCAA and the Department of Defense have been working together on the CARE Consortium or the Concussion Assessment, Research and Education Consortium. The new funding is allowing the continuation of what is to be known as the world’s largest concussion report with 40,000 student athletes and cadets at 30 colleges and military service academies. CARE has initially focused on:

• The acute effects of concussion and repetitive head impact exposure;
• Analysis of head impact forces;
• Advanced brain imaging techniques;
• Genetics and blood biomarkers and their relationship to brain injury;
• And clinical and neurobiological recovery times.

The NCAA and the Department of Defense will be expanding their research on head injuries over the next few years with the recent addition in $22.5 million funding to continue “understanding how concussions affect the brain and identifying ways to improve diagnosis, treatment and prevention.” With using a large range of student athletes to study from and with the help of the large amount of new funding, many hope that CARE Consortium can pave the way and figure out how to better approach this issue with athletes in the future. If they could find a way to protect athletes without making a whole bunch of new and restricting rules and regulations, that would put thousands of minds at ease, but will a true cure or solution ever be discovered?