Motivation
Concussions affect athletes across a broad range of ages. Still, most of the youth sport concussion research focuses on athletes in high school and college. There is no databank that brings together information from across the U.S. to assess the effectiveness of treatments for concussion, the factors that predict recovery or the long-term outcomes of concussions in youngsters under high school age.
Approach
To minimize this gap in research, we supported the Four Corners National Youth Concussion Registry Project (4CYC), a prospective multicenter collaboration between The Sports Institute, Seattle Children’s Hospital, UCLA and Children’s National Medical Center. For the first time, researchers and clinicians can access high-quality data characterizing concussions in a large, diverse population of young people. This collaboration will shed light on the natural course of concussions in kids and the short- and long-term outcomes of different treatment approaches.
Where We Are
Through the 4CYC, we continue to work with collaborators to grow and refine data collection, expanding to additional sites and pursuing funding to bolster this work. This consortium is a powerful platform for national collaborative research efforts examining biomarkers for concussion recovery or new treatment approaches.