Relevance of the Research

In the past two decades, in response to the rising concern over concussions in sport, we have seen an increase in policies at all levels of sport to help prevent, identify and manage concussions. For instance, in response to the concussion-related death of 17-year-old rugby player Rowan Stringer in 2013, the Government of Ontario implemented Rowan’s Law to help prevent concussions in youth sports. While these policies are an important step to increasing youth sports safety in Ontario, they ultimately lack a fundamental consideration, which prevents these policies from being successful: they assume that concussion legislation is universally beneficial to all athletes and neglect to consider how different identity categories (i.e., sex, race, SES) may impact how an athlete experiences and negotiates concussion symptoms and concussion legislation. In other words, these similar policies take a one-size-fits-all approach.

Yet, there are some scholarly results indicating that these identity categories do play a role in how athletes negotiate, experience and heal from concussions. For example, recent research has observed that girls and women in sex-comparable sports are twice as likely to experience concussions than boys and men (i.e., Bretzin et al., 2018; Kerr et al., 2019). Additionally, when women experience concussions, they are likely to experience more severe symptoms (i.e., McGroarty et al., 2020) that typically last longer than men (i.e., Bretzin et al., 2021; Desai et al., 2019). Further, Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPOC), are disproportionately impacted by concussions and Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBIs) (i.e., Brain Injury Canada, 2020; Brenner et al., 2020). Additionally, Indigenous peoples have a higher frequency of TBI when compared to other ethnic groups and races (Lakhani et al., 2017), and in Canada, Indigenous peoples are over two times more likely to suffer from TBIs than the rest of the country (Salaheen et al., 2022). Additionally, Indigenous people are more likely to die due to TBI (Adekoya et al., 2002; Coronado et al., 2011).

My Journey to this Research

For my Ph.D., I entered knowing that I wanted to specifically take up an intersectional approach to concussions in sports to understand how women with different identities may experience, negotiate and heal from concussions differently. In the early stages of my PhD, I was fortunate to have conversations with some amazing Indigenous women who spoke to me about their concussion experiences and the prevalence of concussions among Indigenous women in ice hockey. I quickly learned that we know very little about concussions in sports in the Indigenous community despite the alarming statistics I shared above. So, I decided to explore the prevalence of concussions in ice hockey amongst Indigenous women for my PhD research.

The Project  

For my project, I am inviting Indigenous women (18+) who have experienced a concussion(s) playing competitive ice hockey to participate in a 3-part project. Competitive hockey is loosely defined as having tried out or been invited to a team. The purpose is to understand more about how Indigenous women in ice hockey are experiencing, negotiating and healing from concussions. To gain this in-depth understanding, each woman in my project will participate in three phases:

Phase 1: An interview about their hockey career, concussion experiences, and identities.

Phase 2: An arts-based based component.

In this phase, participants have 2-months to complete an art project on their own time that reflects how they feel when they have experienced a concussion. The participants may choose any art form or medium they like. It can draw on previous artistic passions or be as simple as a picture collage or a photograph. Any art expenses will be covered, up to $50.00, to help assist with this aspect of the project.

Phase 3: An interview about the art.

To learn more about the project, please email me: niya.stamant@queensu.ca

Please feel free to share this post and/or the poster below widely!

Parting Thoughts

With the advent of a growing concern over concussions in sports, this project is important for policy and education. For one, concussion policies and guidelines currently assume that all athletes experience concussions the same way, which neglects the intersection of different athletic identities, particularly around gender and Indigeneity. Yet, for policymakers and others to have these conversations, we need to listen to the voices of Indigenous athletes, particularly Indigenous women, whom policymakers and others so often silence and neglect. Further, this research can have policy implications, where future concussion policies, protocols and guidelines can attend to the unique determinants that play a role in the high prevalence of concussions in Indigenous women. Second, this inquiry will hopefully assist Indigenous communities and sporting organizations (and non-Indigenous sporting organizations with Indigenous athletes) to better identify, prevent and manage concussions in sports by recognizing the unique contexts of Indigenous athletes as they negotiate, respond to, and heal from concussions. Ultimately, I seek to bring the voices of Indigenous women to the forefront of concussion research because of how they have historically fallen between the cracks.

References

Adekoya, N. & Wallace, L. J. D. (2002). Traumatic brain injury among American Indians/Alaska Natives–United States, 1992–1996. The Journal of the American Medical Association, 288(1), 37-38. doi:10.1001/jama.288.1.37

Brain Injury Canada. (2020). Statistics. https://braininjurycanada.ca/en/statistics/

Brenner, E. K., Grossner, E. C., Johnson, B. N., Bernier, R. A., Soto, J., & Hillary, F. G. (2020). Race and ethnicity considerations in traumatic brain injury research: Incidence, reporting, and outcome. Brain Injury, 34(6), 801–810. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699052.2020.1741033

Bretzin, A. C., Covassin T., Fox, M. E., Petit, K.M., Savage, J.L., Walker, L.F., & Gould, D. (2018). Sex differences in the clinical incidence of concussions, missed school days, and time loss in high school student-athletes: Part 1. The American Journal of Sports Medicine, 46(9), 2263-2269. DOI: 10.1177/0363546518778251

Bretzin, A.C., Covassin, T., Wiebe, D. J., & Stewart, W. (2021). Association of sex with adolescent soccer concussion incidence and characteristics. The Journal of American Medical Association, 4(4), e218191. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.8191

Coronado, V. G., Xu, L., Basavaraju, S. V., McGuire, L. C., Wald, M. M., Faul, M. D., Guzman, B. R., & Hemphill, J. D. (2011). Surveillance for traumatic brain injury—related deaths—United States, 1997-2007. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss6005a1.htm#:~:text=considered%20statistically%20significant.-,Results,population%20(p%20%3D%200.001).

Desai, N., Wiebe, D. J., Corwin, D. J., Lockyer, J. E., Grady, M. F., & Master, C. L. (2019). Factors affecting recovery trajectories in pediatric female concussion. Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine: Official Journal of the Canadian Academy of Sport Medicine, 29(5), 361–367. https://doi.org/10.1097/JSM.0000000000000646

Kerr, Z. Y., Chandran, A., Nedimyer, A. K., Arakkal, A., Pierpoint, L. A., & Zuckerman, S. L. (2019). Concussion incidence and trends in 20 high school sports. Pediatrics, 144(5), e20192180. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2019-2180

Lakhani, A., Townsend, C., & Bishara, J. (2017). Traumatic brain injury amongst Indigenous people: a systematic review. Brain Injury, 31(13-14), 1718–1730. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699052.2017.1374468

McGroarty, N. K., Brown, S. M., & Mulcahey, M. K. (2020). Sport-related concussion in female athletes: A systematic review. Orthopaedic journal of sports medicine, 8(7), 2325967120932306. https://doi.org/10.1177/2325967120932306

Salaheen, Z., Moghaddamjour, A., & Fehlings, M. (2022). Neurotrauma in Indigenous populations of Canada – Challenges and opportunities at a global level: A scoping review. World Neurosurgery, 167, 213-221. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wneu.2022.07.108