For Immediate Release
Concord, MA, March 2, 2014: On Friday, March 7, 2014, Brooke de Lench will be
participating in a day-long symposium presented by the University of Maryland's Journal of Business & Technology Law (JBTL) on the "State of Concussions: Protecting Athletes through Advances in Law, Public Health, and Science." An interdisciplinary discussion on the effects and consequences of concussions in 
professional, collegiate, amateur, and recreational sports, the symposium will be held at the Francis King Carey School of Law in Baltimore.
De Lench, Executive Director of the non-profit MomsTEAM Institute and Founder and Publisher of MomsTEAM.com, will be sharing the solutions-based work she has been doing with sports parents, coaches, and athletic trainers from every state of the nation since she began the MomsTEAM Youth Sports Concussion Safety Center fourteen years ago, including as an advocate for the use of impact sensors in contact and collision sports, which were featured in her PBS documentary, "The Smartest Team: Making High School Football Safer."
JBTL will be bringing together scholars, practitioners, medical professionals, legislators, and other experts, including Gerry Gioia, PhD, Director of the SCORE (Safe Concussion Outcome Recovery and Education) program at Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., Sports On Earth writer Patrick Hruby, Andrew E. Lincoln, MD, Program Coordinator of the MedStar Sports Concussion Program in Baltimore, Greg Merrill, Co-Founder and CEO of Brain Sentry, an impact sensor manufacturer, and Silvia Mackey, widow of the late NFL Hall of Fame tight end, John Mackey.
Some of the topics the speakers and panelists plan to discuss include:
- Legal ramifications for professional sports franchises, as well as college, universities, and secondary schools, for not properly diagnosing concussions and concussion-like symptoms for their athletes
- Legislation, which has been signed in nearly every state, that focuses on return-to-play provisions for high school athletes;
- Costs and responsibilities associated with training individuals to better diagnose concussions and other brain-related sports injuries;
- Innovations in helmet design and the technology being used to protect athletes during competition; and
- Health consequences ‐ physical, mental, long-term, and short-term ‐ resulting from concussions.
About Brooke de Lench
Recognized as a visionary thought leader in youth sports safety and a pioneer in concussion education for the past fifteen years, Brooke de Lench is journalist and blogger for MomsTEAM.com, now in its fifteenth year as the trusted source of youth sports parenting information, the author of Home Team Advantage: The Critical Role of Mothers in Youth Sports (New York: HarperCollins), and Producer/Director/Creator of the critically acclaimed documentary "The Smartest Team: Making High School Football Safer," now airing on selected PBS stations across the country through early 2014.
A sought-after speaker on a wide range of youth sport parenting topics, she has made appearances on all the major television networks (ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox), as well as The Today Show, the CBS Morning Show, ESPN's "Outside the Lines," and three documentaries on youth sports, which aired on ESPN, HBO and A&E respectively. Ms. de Lench has also consulted for PBS's Frontline, HBO Real Sports, ABC's Nightline and ESPN youth sports-related shows and youth sports programs across the country.
She is quoted frequently in the print press, including Time, Reader's Digest, The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, and The Washington Post, and her opinion pieces have appeared on the op-ed pages of major newspapers nationwide, including The Washington Post and Long Island Newsday. A former high school and college athlete and ranked squash player, Ms. de Lench is the mother of triplet sons, and lives in the Boston area.
Contact:
Ali Bailey
support@MomsTeam.com
[800] 474-5201 EXT 3
