Head impact biomechanics, neurobehavioral health, and community perspectives on safety in youth ice hockey - Project Summary / Abstract Ice hockey’s growing popularity includes over one million athletes in the US and Canada with a strong increase in participation among females and adolescents. The sport has relatively high concussion rates compared to others, including football, as it is a fast-paced sport with ice and board surfaces. Subconcussive head impact exposure (HIE) has been associated with short- and long-term neurobehavioral changes. Detailed information about head impact biomechanics and neurobehavioral health in this young and developing population are lacking. Our study leverages multidisciplinary expertise to relate biomechanics-based metrics to athlete and play characteristics and neurobehavioral health. We will implement advanced measurement and analytical approaches characterizing HIE in adolescent boys’ and girls’ ice hockey players. This goal addresses an unmet need to intersect these study elements to inform safety recommendations to improve the sport’s safety. Dr. Joel Stitzel (WFU, MPI) has developed and employed an innovative instrumentation system, and video and data processing strategies and algorithms to adequately contextualize HIE. Dr. Jason Mihalik (UNC, MPI) has strong experience studying youth hockey head impact biomechanics and neurobehavioral outcomes. Combined, our inter-institutional multidisciplinary team has a proven record deploying head impact technologies in the field, working with adolescent athletes, studying neurobehavioral outcomes, and translating key findings into recommendations and policy changes to improve athlete and sport safety. Together, we will address our central hypothesis that biomechanics informs understanding of HIE in the context of athlete and play characteristics, and HIE among adolescent ice hockey players elucidates neurobehavioral health effects (i.e., executive function, impulsivity). This will serve as a paradigm to evaluate key community members’ awareness and receptivity to strategies to improve safety by reducing HIE. This addresses our long-term goal to use head impact biomechanics to improve sport safety more broadly. Our specific aims are to (1) Characterize head impact biomechanics and neurobehavioral health in adolescent boys’ and girls’ ice hockey, (2) Evaluate the relationship between athlete and play characteristics and HIE while controlling for neurobehavioral health, and (3) Determine the awareness and receptivity among key community members to using biomechanical data to improve head impact safety in ice hockey. We will accomplish this by using innovative mouthpiece-based instrumentation and neurobehavioral measures (Aim 1), using time synchronized video to identify head impact biomechanics event context and controlling for neurobehavioral health outcomes (Aim 2), and using a community-engaged approach to assess knowledge, attitudes, and perceptions of hockey HIE and concussions (Aim 3). We will develop a comprehensive understanding of HIE in boys’ and girls’ youth hockey grounded in accurate HIE metrics and their relationship to athlete and play characteristics and neurobehavioral health. This will facilitate discussions of receptivity to strategies to reduce HIE and concussion risk and increase benefits of participation in ice hockey.
