The Head Injury Tracker: Monitoring Concussions in College and High School Varsity Athletes Lily Cabour ’14 Maine Concussion Management Initiative, Colby College Introduction Maine Concussion Management Initiative (MCMI) is a non-profit dedicated to improving the safety of Maine’s youth by increasing awareness and education on concussion management. MCMI is a pioneer in concussion research and education outreach in the state of Maine and is beginning to expand its impact across New England. The Head Injury Tracker (HIT) is a development product created by the MCMI Research Group. Acknowledgements I would like to thank Dr. Paul Berkner and the MCMI team, whose vision and commitment towards treating and managing concussions inspired this research. I would also like to thank Professor Jim Scott for his help and guidance throughout the project. Mission Statement To improve the safety of Maine’s youth by increasing awareness, promoting advocacy, and standardizing the management of activity related concussions. Table 1. A summary table on the total number athlete concussions from 11 participating colleges (n=120). Table 2. A summary table on the total number athlete concussions from 10 participating Maine high schools(n=59). Table 4. A summary table on total number of concussions by organized by gender for high school and college varsity athletes. Figures 2 & 3. The distribution, excluding the outliers, of the number of days between injury date academic return (n= 167, x = 7.76, σ= 10.49) (1), and the distribution of the number of days between injury date and athletic return (n= 165, x= 20.27, σ= 18.00) (2). Figures 1. Box plots showing the distribution of symptom scores categorized by female varsity athletes (n= 68, x= 21.79, σ=17.73) and male varsity athletes (n=91, x =20.53, σ= 17.85). Figure 5. A spineplot showing the fraction of concussions from each sport and categorized by gender (n=179). More Information For more information regarding MCMI and the HIT App, please visit our website and facebook page: web.colby.edu/mcmi The HIT App The Head Injury Tracker (HIT) Application is a smartphone application that allows athletic trainers and school officials to easily record and track concussions. The HIT App records information basic regarding a student athlete's gender, age, sport, concussion scenario, history of ADHD, migraines and prior concussions. For the school year, the HIT App is being piloted at over 30 High Schools and all NESCAC colleges. This data represents the information collected from our pilot year. We hope to make the application available to all MCMI member high schools for free in the school year as we continue to grow our data pool. Table 3. A summary table on total number of concussions by organized by scenario for high school and college varsity athletes. Figure 4. This chart illustrates the difference between the average number of days between the concussion injury date and academic versus athletic return, organized by sport (n=165)