Improving Concussion Data
August 18, 2017
The Michigan High School Athletic Association’s 750 member high schools reported nearly 500 fewer concussions for the 2016-17 school year than the year before – 11 percent fewer.
That’s good news, but it’s not a trend we can bank on. It’s too soon to do that. There are too many variables that might explain or contribute to the decline from 4,452 to 3,958 concussions.
Related Story | 2016-17 Summary Report
But of this we are certain: Schools are taking head injuries seriously. It is not a lack of concern or a lack of care in reporting that has led to the 11 percent decline.
It’s more likely the second year’s data is just better than the first year. The process was better understood. The numbers are more accurate.
Our data will become most reliable and useful when we have several years to compare and analyze. Only then will we really know where the trouble spots remain; and only then can those areas be most effectively addressed.
Bubble Wrap
October 28, 2014
We must do everything we can do to minimize serious injuries in school sports; but because the benefits of school sports participation are so universal and serious injuries so unusual, we should accompany our continuing campaigns for safety with constant appeals for common sense.
It is a compliment to school sports that each and every one of the very rare number of school sports-related deaths carries with it great sorrow and scrutiny. Nationwide there are so few tragedies that schools treat all of them with tenderness; and we try to learn from each of them how to have fewer of them.
But the attention we give to increased safety should not outshout the safety record we already have in school sports, especially compared to activities that lead to far more deaths with far less attention. For example, each year . . .
- 20 skateboarding deaths;
- 40 skiing deaths;
- 400 youth drownings; and
- 700 bicycling deaths.
Compared to school sports, these numbers are epidemics; and compared to school sports, these epidemics are ignored.
Our world is not bubble wrapped, nor should it be. School sports is not 100 percent injury-free, nor can it be. We should work to make school sports still safer, and work almost as hard to explain how safe school sports already is.