Research summary
Concussions can occur during various sports played by youth at all levels, sometimes causing significant personal consequences. Dr. Carolyn A. Emery, Canada Research Chair in Concussion, aims to the reduce the personal and healthcare burdens related to the consequences of concussion.
Emery and her research team are using a combination of approaches to do this. First, they are establishing a nation-wide program to track concussions in schools and community sports to evaluate the risk factors and the predictors of recovery. They are also integrating multimodal research tools—including wearable sensors, blood biomarkers and physiological, neuromotor, psychosocial and imaging tools—to evaluate different ways to detect and diagnose concussions and forecast the prognosis of people who sustain them. Finally, they are evaluating the implementation, effectiveness and sustainability of new prevention strategies, such as policy changes, training interventions and equipment, and assessing current rehabilitation strategies.