141st APHA Annual Meeting

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288062
Feel good or do good law? mapping the rapid implementation and evolution of youth sports concussion laws using lawatlas workbench

Tuesday, November 5, 2013 : 9:25 AM - 9:40 AM

Damika Webb, JD , Public Health Law Research, Philadelphia, PA
Each year as many as 300,000 young people suffer concussions from playing sports. These traumatic brain injuries have serious short and long term effects. With increased awareness lead by advocacy groups, the media and professional sports associations, there was a rapid adoption by states of laws aimed at reducing harm from sports concussions.

In 2012, a legal database of 50 states was created in LawAtlas of youth sports TBI-reduction laws. In 2013, a systematic updating process was used to capture any changes in key features of current law or the adoption of new law. Statutory provisions were reviewed for their consistency with current scientific understanding of the causes, prevention, and treatment of youth TBI's.

The efforts of concussion prevention advocates, professional sports associations and the media help keep the spotlight on the issue of traumatic brain injury as an area for policy action. It appears that the initial laws in this area were passed in a reactionary fashion missing important features for prevention of the 2nd concussion or exacerbation of the first injury. Continued research focused on evaluating the impact of such laws along with further innovation in understanding the epidemiology of TBI's will be needed to develop a more comprehensive TBI-reduction solution. It will be important to integrate evidence-based research into the policy process as these laws continue to evolve.

Learning Areas:
Public health or related public policy

Learning Objectives:
Describe variations among laws aimed at preventing the reoccurrence of sports-related concussions in youth Explain how to accurately map the evolution of sports concussion laws in LawAtlas Workbench Assess whether evidence-based research can be linked to policy changes in Youth Sports Concussions

Keywords: Law, Traumatic Brain Injury

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I have constructed and updated legal dataset using the LawAtlas content management system. I currently manage all legal datasets developed in Workbench from conceptualization to web-publishing.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.