Skip to main content

February 1, 2016

Talks@12: Tackling Football Injuries

 

Lee Nadler, MD, principal investigator of the Football Players Health Study; Rodney Peete, player advisor, Holly Robinson Peete, family advisor; Alvaro Pascual-Leone, MD, PhD, co-director; Ross Zafonte, DO, co-director
Lee Nadler, MD, principal investigator of the Football Players Health Study; Rodney Peete, player advisor, Holly Robinson Peete, family advisor; Alvaro Pascual-Leone, MD, PhD, co-director; Ross Zafonte, DO, co-director

 

On February 1, a packed auditorium and over 44,000 live stream viewers tuned in to hear our associate directors Ross Zafonte and Alvaro Pascual-Leone present ‘Tackling Football Injuries’ as part of Harvard Medical School’s Talks@12 series. The hour-long talk addressed both the urgent need for exhaustive research on the many health conditions former players face, and the challenges inherent in such an undertaking. “Everybody is in this game,” said Dr. Zafonte, who is also a practicing rehabilitation physician at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital. “What we’re interested in is how do we transform the lives of former players and use that information to impact the future.”

Dr. Pascual-Leone, a neurologist and director of the Berenson-Allen Center for Noninvasive Brain Stimulation at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, spoke passionately about the need to engage thousands more players. “We need everyone. We need everyone because when we focus on responders in any one epidemiological effort we risk having a biased sample.”

Rodney Peete, former NFL quarterback and player advisor for the Study, and his wife, Holly Robinson Peete, family advisor, were in attendance. After the talk, Mr. Peete was asked to say a few words. He spoke eloquently about how much had changed from the time he started playing football in 1989 to when he retired in 2005, and how important it is to support an independent study like the Football Players Health Study. “It’s vital for players like me and other players to share this information so we can understand the human body, so we can understand life after football.”

Watch Talks@12: Tackling Football Injuries in its entirety.

 

TOPICS
Study News
Media Coverage