National Sports Brain Bank Study - African American, Asian, Hispanic or any other minority group

STUDY BASICS

Are you 18 years of age or older? Do you identify as African American/Black, Asian, Hispanic or any other minority group? Did you ever participate in contact sports and/or have a concussion? You may be eligible for a research study to create a comprehensive clinical dataset and tissue repository that will allow new insights into long-term brain health after head trauma.

STUDY PURPOSE

Athletes who participate in contact sports such as football may have experienced one or more concussions or mild traumatic brain injury events during their career. This exposure is associated with an increased risk of psychiatric and cognitive syndromes later in life and the development of a neurodegenerative disease called “Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE)”. 

Combining the information gathered from the questionnaires with the brain autopsy findings will provide new information of the prevalence of this disease and may provide new insights into risk factors as well as to why some people may show resilience in developing CTE.  Moreover, neurodegenerative diseases including CTE are often understudied in minority groups. We believe that our study should reflect the diversity in our population and that every single participant will contribute a piece to the puzzle.

COULD THIS STUDY BE RIGHT FOR YOU?

• Men and women age 18 years and older
• African American, Asian, Hispanic or any other minority group 
• Contact sport participation and/or history of concussion (Contact sports such as football, boxing, wrestling, ice hockey, soccer, or others OR a history of a concussion outside of contact sports.)

WHAT PARTICIPANTS CAN EXPECT

Participants will be asked to complete a series of questionnaires that will ask about their medical history, sports participation, trauma history, emotional symptoms, and thinking abilities. After this initial assessment, we will follow-up with participants on a yearly basis to receive updates on their health, and we will repeat the cognitive testing every year. We will also ask participants to consider donating their brain to our tissue repository (“National Sports Brain Bank”).