06/10/2025
So much wonderful learning these last few days at the Canadian Concussion Network’s Annual Meeting!
A few (there’s more than this!!) of my take homes and action plans:
🔹Intimate partner violence is a massively underreported and understudied area of brain injury, as well as a distinct type of brain injury. We are just learning about the differences in how a brain injury from intimate partner violence affects the brain differently than concussions.
🔹There’s a great program for helping youth teach youth about concussions! The You-CAN program is based out of Ontario and helps high school students bring evidence based concussion info to their schools. The best part? It’s designed as a for-youth-by-youth approach! I’ll be reaching out to our local high schools this month to see if this is something we can implement locally for September.
🔹 Blood based biomarkers for concussion are coming but they aren’t here yet! We are still a ways away from diagnosing a concussion with a blood test.
🔹 There’s some cool research starting to look at treating persisting concussion symptoms with psychedelics. Stay tuned for the results!
🔹 Should we rebrand “mindfulness” as “attention training”? I can think of several clients of mine, both past and present, who I think would have responded much better to the idea of “attention training”.
There’s so much amazing Canadian research happening around a variety of topics with concussion and spanning from injury through the end of recovery. Canadian researchers across the country are studying links with mental health, the social determinants of health, blood based biomarkers, neuroimaging, protective devices, education implementation… I could go on!
Not only did the topics range beautifully, the people did too! I met researchers, people in policy decision making and funding roles from the provincial and federal government, massage therapists, physicians, representatives from the insurance sector, athletic therapists, executive directors of non profits, mindfulness instructors, people with lived experience in brain injury and more.
Thank you for putting on a great conference!
