Opening Statement from Ranking Member DeGette; Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Hearing on “Concussions in Youth Sports: Evaluating Prevention and Research”

As delivered

Thank you so much Mr. Chairman for having this follow-up hearing on our round-table that we held on concussions and brain trauma earlier this year.

I’m very pleased that the Committee is looking first to youth sports through official hearings because studies have shown that children and teens are more likely than adults to get a concussion and they take longer to recover.

Athletes at the professional and college levels, they can make their own decisions about undertaking the risks associated with certain sports. But we need to ensure that children and their parents have enough data to make informed decisions about participation in youth contact sports. Part of that discussion needs to be the recognition of how valuable these sports are – both for physical fitness and team building, as you so well stated, Mr. Chairman –but I think we also need to have an open discussion about how to make them safer.

I approach this issue both as a policymaker and a parent. And as I said in the round-table, I support evidence-based policymaking, and am very encouraged that we are having ongoing research to better understand brain trauma. But at our round-table, the experts said they’re going to have answers about what the protocols should be in seven to 10 years. And what I said at that hearing is, as a mom, when I’m deciding if my kid is going to play pee-wee sports, I can’t afford to wait seven to 10 years. By then, they’ll be in high school and so we need to take whatever evidence that we have right now, and we need to figure out for now what we should tell parents and what we should tell leagues as the best practices as far as we know right now.

For example, at what age should children start playing tackle football? How many times a week should children be engaging in full-contact practices? And when they do begin to play, how do we teach them to tackle safely and to protect their heads and the heads of other players? And how do we ensure that coaches are educated in teaching these skills to young players? I’m sure that we can ask other questions in all youth sports, not just football.

I agree that most – if not all – parents would agree that it is better to err on the side of caution. The worst case scenario would be that we discover later that some of these safety measures may have been unnecessary. But as a mom, I always want to have more safety rather than less safety, especially when we’re talking about our children’s brains.

Now as we implement changes in sports now, that is not a reason to stop researching our gaps in knowledge. We need to understand the long-term effects of concussive and subconcussive injuries. We need to analyze whether the rule changes being implemented are having the desired effects. We need to study how to prevent brain injury in the first place.

I also am interested in hearing from our witnesses about the differences we’re seeing in girls’ and boys’ sports and how the rates of concussion differ. I know that have been studies suggesting that women and girls report concussions at higher rates than men and boys in similar sports. I want to know about that disparity, and also if there’s any disparity about the actual effects on brains.

Both of our panels contain excellent witnesses, and it’s so important to have them today. I’m really proud to welcome two witnesses from Colorado.

Kelli Jantz, as you heard, tragically lost her son Jake to Second Impact Syndrome in 2004. And Kelli, I’m so proud of you because what did is you were in ensuring that concussions are taken seriously in youth sports and that parents and coaches have the information they need. As the Chairman mentioned, in 2012, Governor Hickenlooper signed the Jake Snakenberg Youth Sports Concussion Act into law in Colorado. And we’re really proud that you’ve taken his legacy to that point – we really are.

Dr. Dawn Comstock is in our second panel. She’s from the Colorado School of Public Health – and, like me, a Colorado native. She’s one of the leading experts in sports injury epidemiology. Her database gathers information on injury exposure and incidence among high school athletes. She looks at injury patterns – like examining the correlation between neck strength and concussion risk – to inform prevention and mitigation strategies.

I want to thank you also, Dr. Comstock, for making youth sports safer.

I want thank everybody who’s here today to help us figure this out. And I also really want to say we want to see sports succeed. I can’t let this hearing go by without congratulating the World Champion Denver Broncos, for example, for which I have season tickets. And I also want to say, as I’ve said before, one of my great sadnesses is that I was unable to persuade either of my daughters to play ice hockey and they took up dance instead. But the point is, every child in this country should be safe. We love sports, we want to see sports succeed, but that means that we have to do our utmost to improve player safety and guarantee that participation in sports doesn’t mean that you have long-term health consequences.

So I know, Mr. Chairman, you intend to have more hearings. I think this is the perfect place to start and I thank you again and yield back.