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Project BRAIN Currents

Volume XVI, Issue 1Winter 2016

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Is it Spring Yet?

Does Your School Have a Concussion Management Plan?

We were fortunate to take part in the statewide PIE (Partners in Education) conference provided by the TN Department of Education, Division of Special Populations for educators recently and met some great people from across the state. In our presentation, we asked the group if their school had a protocol or a specific plan that everyone knew to follow when a child sustains a concussion/brain injury. A few did, but most weren’t sure or knew that they did not have a plan in place.

It may sound like a complex task to create a concussion management plan, but we asked our participants to get in small groups and come up with no more than five first steps to take back to their schools to start the conversation. We heard from teachers, administrators and coaches about what they wanted for their students and how they had learned some of the basics that belong in every school’s plan.

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On the next page are awesome websites that have done so much of the work for you! These sample plans can be very simple or can include more details, but ultimately, they are designed to make sure that every student has the supports in place if needed to return to school after a concussion.

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Some easy to follow plans:

The REAP (Reduce, Educate, Accommodate, Pace) Project:

CBIRT (Center on Brain Injury Research and Training):

CDC (Centers for Disease Control) for Coaches:

CDC Heads Up to Schools:

Colorado Dept. of Education:

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Meet Chris Wieland

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I am your new Brain Injury Transition Liaison for the West Tennessee area. I operate out of Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital. I have a Bachelor of Arts Degree from the University of Memphis and have prior experience in the disability field as a communications assistant for the Deaf. Before joining the Project BRAIN family I was mostly recently working in real estate marketing and freelance photojournalism.

I come to the program as a family member of a brain injury survivor and am looking forward to positively impacting the lives of our children treated for TBI and their families.

Please call or email if I can be of assistance.

901-287-6262

Concussion movie

Are you thinking about seeing the movie starring Will Smith? Consider this review from Time:

“Will Smith's NFL drama does justice to the genre of whistle-blowing films through its fearlessness.”

Movies about corporate truth-tellers loom large in the American landscape. Serpico,Silkwood,Erin Brockovich,The Insider—watching cinematic Davids warn about out-of-control Goliaths has undeniable force. There’s one big force, the National Football League, trying to stop Dr. Bennet Omalu (Will Smith) from blowing a whistle inConcussion, a true-life drama that’s as surprisingly brave as it is gripping.

After Omalu, a Pittsburgh forensic neuropathologist, dissects the brain of recently deceased 50-year-old football hall of famer Mike Webster (David Morse), he discovers specific proteins present that likely led to the retired star’s madness and death—and which Omalu believes were caused by the repeated head impact Webster endured on the field.Autopsies of other ex-NFL-ers back up the theory, and soon Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy or CTE, as Omalu names the disease, riles an angry football league.

But Omalu presses on, aided by NFL neurological consultant Dr. Julian Bailes (Alec Baldwin), and becomes ever more worried that a preventable tragedy is literally playing out in front of millions of fans.

Writer-director Peter Landesmann intercuts Omalu’s building an argument about a major entertainment industry’s negligence with his building a home with Prema (GuguMbatha-Raw), and she and Bailes voice what feels like an obligatory counter-argument. “This game is beautiful,” Prema says at one point, while Bailes waxes about its appeal: “It’s incredibly violent … and then, suddenly, it’s Shakespeare.”

But that’s the extent of the equal time the NFL gets, andConcussionis stronger for keeping such pronounce-ments to a minimum. Omalu—a man of faith who quirkily asks the corpses he works on for help so he can “tell their story”—has belief in what he sees in his lab, and his calm, multiple-medical-degreed logic anchors the story.

Smith tamps down his charisma to portray a courtly, cerebral and compelling man of science; Omalu is an Nigerian immigrant who loves America but is shocked at its willingness to be blindsided. As Smith bows his head to listen, or sits mystified as NFL reps state how his expertise doesn’t trump bought-and-paid-for research, his eyes fill with something between pity and disgust: The former players whose histories haunt Omalu mean more to him dead than they did to the NFL alive.

Read the full review by Joe Neumaier:

501 Families benefitted by BITL Process October—December 2015 !

As we talk with more families and schools through our Brain Injury Transition Liaison (BITL) Process, we are finding some common problems after “mild” brain injury. These sites address some of those challenges.

Problems with sleep in young children (and all ages of students)

Returning to school too soon only to find that symptoms return

Changes in school that may be new to student and parents

Child may want to return to sports but is not symptom free

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March is Brain Injury Awareness Month

March 427th Annual TBI Survivor, Family member and Caregiver Conference, Nashville

March 10-11TN AHEAD (Assoc. Higher Ed. Admin & Disability) Conf., Chattanooga

March 18Pediatric Potpourri, TheCollonade in Ringgold, GA

March 20-24TN HOSA-Future Health Professionals Conf., Nashville

March 21TBI Advisory Council Meeting, Smyrna

April 1Intermountain TBI Conf., Johnson City

April 8-9TN Emer. Med. Serv. for Children Conf., Nashville

April 8-9Acute and Emer. Pediatric Care Conf., Franklin

April 22-24TN Parent Teacher Assoc. Convention, Knoxville

April 27Chatt. Area Brain Injury Assoc. (CABIA) Conf., Chattanooga Choo-Choo

May 1-4TN Coord. School Health Institute, Nashville

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Tennessee Disability Coalition

Project BRAIN is/was supported by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under Grant No. H21MCO26923, Traumatic Brain Injury Implementation Partnership Grants for $250,000 and in part by TN Departments of Health and Education, Division of Special Populations. This information or content and conclusions are those of the author and should not be construed as the official position or policy of, nor should any endorsements be inferred by HRSA, HHS or the U.S. Government.

Project BRAIN

955 Woodland Street

Nashville, TN 37206

For more information:

Wanda Keath, MSW, SSW, CBIS

West TN Resource Specialist / Trainer

901-813-8595

Paula Denslow, CBIS

Director & Middle TN

Resource Specialist / Trainer

615-585-2998

Jennifer Rayman, Ed.S, CRC, CBIS

Curriculum Coordinator / Trainer

865-951-2282