Concussion Prevention Education for Maintenance of a Healthy Brain

Abstract

A concussion education program was designed to educate children ages 10 to 12 to help prevent pediatric traumatic brain injury that impacts 475,000 children in the United States each year. Short‐ and long‐term cognitive impairments and physical and psychological symptoms are seen after traumatic brain injury or concussions. Thus, it is important to educate children about what a concussion is, what the signs and symptoms are, and what to do if they sustain a concussion so they can get the medical care they need.Goals of this program were for participants to be able to define a concussion, recognize the signs and symptoms of a concussion, what to do in an event of sustaining a concussion, and evaluate the efficacy of our concussion education outreach.We created a brief concussion education program that includes an informative presentation, hands‐on activities to reinforce the material discussed and pre‐ and post‐tests to evaluate the efficacy of our concussion education experience. We taught a total of 207 fifth and seventh grade students about concussions using our education program.Results obtained from quantitative data from the pre‐ and post‐test revealed that the students who participated in our concussion education showed highly statistically significant increases in their knowledge on concussions after participating in our concussion education activity. Qualitative data from the student experience survey administered at the end of the Brain Outreach Program revealed that the participating students found our concussion education station fun, enjoyable, and easy to understand. Therefore, educational outreach programs such as the one executed are effective in engaging and raising awareness on concussions.This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2018 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.