Bryan Toporek, Education Week‘s in-house K-12 sports expert and author of the Schooled in Sports blog, has a new Q&A up with Dr. Robert Cantu, the author of Concussions and Our Kids (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). Dr. Cantu is the chief of neurosurgery at Emerson Hospital and co-director of Boston University’s Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy. He has long been considered a leading youth-concussion expert in the United States, Toporek writes.
Concussions are no joking matter. The interview covers the ongoing youth-sports concussion crisis in the United States and Dr. Cantu’s thoughts on potentially controversial policy changes that could prevent concussions from occurring in youth sports. Getting programs at the K-8 level to do more to protect young kids from the potentially long-term effects of significant head trauma is certainly a critical issue.
Toporek has provided significant coverage on the issue of youth concussions in previous posts.