The Department of Defense (DoD) and the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) recently announced that their Mind Matters Challenge is accepting submissions. The Mind Matters Challenge, which is part of an alliance between the two organizations, is a $4 million educational challenge aimed at changing concussion safety behaviors.
The Mind Matters Challenge is two concurrent challenges. One, an educational program challenge, aimed at young adults, seeks to identify entities that have the expertise and capability to create compelling and impactful educational materials for service members, student athletes and other at risk populations in the area of concussion education. The second challenge is a research initiative designed to identify key factors and methodologies for affecting change in the culture and behavior of high-risk young adult populations such as student athletes and service members.
There have been more than 300,000 reported traumatic brain injuries DoD wide since 2000. The majority of those are in the Army and a majority of those are mild TBIs, commonly referred to as concussion. Severe TBIs are often obvious; unfortunately, concussions are not as evident, and this invisible injury often goes unnoticed and unreported. Even if they have symptoms, service members and student athletes often do not seek help due to stigmas associated with help seeking behaviors as well as fear of letting teammates down.
"To appropriately treat concussive injuries, we need to begin by knowing the injury occurred," said Brian Hainline, the NCAA's Chief Medical Officer and first person to hold that position in the organization. "This may seem very basic, but it is one of the greatest challenges we face. We need to create a culture on every sideline and in every training room that encourages immediate full reporting and treatment," he said.
DoD maintains concussive care centers in theatre, and if service members in theatre experience a concussive event such as being near or in a blast, they must be seen at one of the centers and are taken out of the fight and monitored for at least a day. More than 80 percent of the Army's reported concussions happen in a garrison environment. As a result, the theatre concussive care system is now enforced in garrison as well.
The alliance between the DoD and the NCAA known as the Grand Alliance makes sense because of the vast similarities among both populations.
"Both groups are young, ambitious, bright risk takers," said Hainline. "They are engaged in activities that change their life…activities in the pursuit of excellence," he said.
The Grand Alliance is also funding the most comprehensive study of concussion and head impact exposure ever conducted. The study began this fall and will enroll an estimated 25,000 male and female athletes over three years at 30 schools, including all four service academies.
Just like in the military, most TBI's sustained among NCAA athletes are concussions. The NCAA has a level of control over their population along with more predictability of when a concussive injury is likely to occur. According to Hainline, this puts them in a unique position to be able to learn about concussions in a way that hasn't been studied before.
"We will find out extraordinary information that will be shared with not only the military, but with the general public as well. Concussion is a public health issue," he said.
"We simply do not know enough about concussion," said Hainline who also serves as councilor and chair of the strategic planning group of the Executive Committee of the American Academy of Neurology Sports Neurology Section, of which he was a founding member. "This is actually the first year that all neurology residents in the United States are required to receive concussion education."
While the catalyst for the NCAA's interest in concussion was an article in the New York Times and National Football League (NFL) Commissioner Roger Goodell's 2009 congressional hearings on the subject, it was in 2007 when Congress began asking the military questions about how they were managing TBI and concussions among service members, according to Col. Dallas Hack, Brain Health and Fitness Coordinator at the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command and the DoD lead for the alliance.
Since that time, TBI has become the signature wound of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and as a result, the DoD has funded nearly a billion dollars in TBI research. The DoD has funded more research than anyone in regard to concussion, Hack said. Together DoD and the NCAA will pour $30 million dollars into the research they conduct together over the next few years. Both organizations are committed to the alliance beyond the initial three years and for the long haul.
The Mind Matters Challenge is open for submissions at https://ninesights.ninesigma.com/web/ncaa-mind-matters-challenge
For more information, please contact Stephanie Abdullah at Stephanie.p.Abdullah.civ@mail.mil with the Army Surgeon General's Office.
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