Nearly three quarters of the football players in the U.S. are less than 14 years old. But amid growing concern about concussion risk in football, the majority of the head-impact research has focused on college and professional players. Researchers at Virginia Tech are changing that. A new study published in the Journal of Neurosurgery: Pediatrics suggests that limiting tackling drills in youth football practices could significantly reduce players’ exposure to serious head impacts. “There are more than three million youth football players in the U.S., but there’s almost no research on this population. We believe that it’s possible to engineer safer sports at every level, but first you need the data. There’s an opportunity here to really make a difference,” said Stefan Duma, the Harry Wyatt Professor of engineering in the College of Engineering and a world-renowned expert on injury biomechanics, who led the research. To read more, click here.
