HealthDay News – Black college athletes have lower levels of concussion symptom awareness than white athletes, despite concussion education requirements from the National Collegiate Athletic Administration (NCAA). This is according to a study published online in the May / June issue of the Journal of Head Trauma Rehabilitation.
Jessica Wallace, Ph.D., MPH of the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, and colleagues examined differences in knowledge of concussion symptoms and the use of concussion information sources among black and white college athletes. The analysis included survey responses from 768 (82.6 percent white and 17.4 percent black) university athletes.
The researchers found that black athletes were significantly more likely to have lower scores for knowledge of concussion symptoms than white athletes. This finding remained similar in the control for covariates (incidence rate 0.97). School-based professional resources, online medical resources, and the NCAA were more frequently cited as sources of concussion information by white athletes, while black athletes were more likely to report umpires as a source of concussion knowledge.
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“The results underscore the need for equitable strategies to disseminate concussion information to diverse populations by improving doctor-patient relationships and investing in culturally appropriate educational materials,” the authors write.
Abstract / full text
Subjects:
Concussion Health Disparity Traumatic Brain Injury
