By Rachel Moore
Earlier this spring, Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds signed House File 2442, which updates Iowa’s 2011 Youth Sport and concussion law. The objective of the law is to expand legislation in order to protect Iowa students against long-lasting damage from concussions and other brain injuries.
The law adds “emergency medical care providers” to the list of individuals who can require a student to be immediately be removed from interscholastic activities upon seeing signs or symptoms of a brain injury. Previously, the list only contained coaches, officials and licensed health care providers. A student must also have written clearance from a licensed healthcare professional to return to sports.
Newly added to the law, “legislation calls for ‘return-to-learn’ (RTL) procedures, which ensure that a child receives critical supports and accommodations in the classroom during the recovery period after a brain injury,” stated in the press release. Additionally, gradual “return-to-play” (RTP) procedures allow for a safe re-entry to sports, only after returning to full pre-injury performance in the classroom. RTL and RTP protocols are established to help ease student athletes back into their normal daily routines.
Thomas Brown, an ICC member and chair of the Governor’s Advisory Council on Brain Injuries, said that “the beauty of this legislation is that it protects not only kids injured in the game, but also those who are injured outside of school activities, who may be at risk of ‘Second Impact Syndrome’, due to their participation in sports activities.”
“When concussions are properly recognized and managed in the first few weeks after injury, most individuals recover without lingering symptoms,” stated Geoffrey Lauer, Executive Director of the Brain Injury Alliance of Iowa. “The immediate, appropriate, and coordinated response is what it takes to prevent concussions from developing into long lasting, more severe problems.”
House File 2442 also offers limited liability to schools, in return for following RTP protocols and providing medical professionals at athletic events. Officials must act reasonably, in good faith, and in the best interest of the student athletes without any influence from coach or school officials. The limited liability also extends to emergency medical care providers who follow the same guidelines. Specifically, this is aimed to help schools without the financial resources to properly fund athletic activities.
“A lot of rural schools may not have the money or the healthcare providers in their area available to work or cover some contests, practices or games for their student athletes,” acknowledged Brad Floy, president of Iowa’s Athletic Trainers’ Society. “If the schools actually hire somebody, their liability is reduced if any injury occurs.”
The impetus for the revision was the decision by the Brain Injury Alliance of Iowa (BIAIA) to create the Iowa Concussion Consortium (ICC) in 2015 to provide reliable, statewide information about concussions. The ICC used the REAP model, developed in Colorado and now used in 12 states, to create their own guidelines. REAP was created when a freshman football player collapsed and died after prematurely returning from two mild concussions, occurring within a few weeks of each other. From their findings, the ICC adapted the information to construct RTL and RTP protocols, endorsed by the Iowa Department of Public Health and the Iowa Department of Education, and distributed to Iowa Public School administrators in 2016. Also, the ICC administers training programs to teach and promote critical early response to youth concussion.
Brain injuries have become a major concern in sports, as they are thought to be one of the causes of chronic traumatic encephalopathy — also known as “CTE” — a degenerative brain disease from repetitive blows to the head. According to Floy, the new law uses practices that have been used in professional and collegiate athletics for over five years to battle brain injuries, a step in the right direction.
“We would have loved to have this a few years earlier, but better now than never,” stated Floy.
