The issue of sports-related concussions has been receiving considerable attention lately. A series of deaths, suicides, and permanent developmental delays and neurological impairments resulting from concussions has raised serious concerns about the safety for young student athletes. SAFEO’s efforts through the “I Promise” campaign is directed to educate young athletes, their parents, coaches, and teachers, with a special focus on inner city students, who are largely minority and typically the last to be informed about the occurrence or effects of concussions. Our aim is to insure that young athletes are provided important awareness and preventive information that can mitigate or avert the serious effects a concussion can have, not only on the playing field, but also in the classroom and in their daily living activities. Special efforts will be made to provide materials in other languages so that community residents, whose primary language is other than English, are well-informed.
The Campaign also seeks to motivate young people to take the I Promise pledge that they will acknowledge when they have sustained a head injury while participating in any type of sports’ activity—pledging that they will alert their coaches, team mates, teachers, parents, and other adults so that they can be properly screened and treated by a certified neurological physician. For this effort, we are focusing on all primary athletic activities in which youth are engaged, including those activities that are off the radar for concussion occurrence e.g., skateboarding and soccer.
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