Since its inception, the Chuck Noll Foundation for Brain Injury Research has supported the work of those making ground-breaking advancements in the treatment of concussions, something late Steelers Coach Chuck Noll was a strong advocate of.
Those advancements were among the topics discussed during a symposium focused on Advances in Brain Injury Research: Transforming Lives Through Better Science held on Friday at the PNC Champions Club at Acrisure Stadium.
Steelers President Art Rooney II and former running back Merril Hoge, members of the Foundation's Board of Directors, were on hand, along with more than 200 leading clinicians, researchers, and experts in brain injury from across the country.
"The Chuck Noll Foundation supports advancements in the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of brain injuries through our grant making to researchers. But education is also an important part of our mission," said Rooney, who is the Chairman of the Foundation board. "We are proud to host our first educational symposium on brain injury and convene hundreds of the country's leading minds to drive progress in this critical field."
It was Noll's desire for objective data on concussions that led to the development of the imPACT test and continued research on concussions.
"It always comes back to Chuck Noll, and his demand of integrity, accountability, and prove it to me approach," said Hoge. "He had the approach, if something needs done, do it. Nobody in sports, or anywhere on the planet, had been looking at head trauma in the manner Chuck wanted it done and he really kicked it off by that initiative. No concussion is the same for everybody and how they'll recover is not going to be the same as somebody else.
"It was about understanding the differences, something that is being studied more now with women's concussions differing from men's concussions. We're looking into really helping all sports and all genders who suffer concussions in other manners as well, to make sure they have proper treatment and care for head trauma. That's what the Chuck Noll Foundation is really based on. Doing the things that will help us get answers for everybody, not a specific group."
Dr. Micky Collins, the clinical and executive director of the UPMC Sports Medicine Concussion Program, was among the keynote speakers, addressing concussion clinical profiles and targeted treatments.
"Concussion is a treatable injury, and we've identified five different types of concussions," said Collins. "And for each type of concussion, there's different symptoms, there's different objective findings that we see in the tools that we use. We also discussed how there's different risk factors for these different profiles as well. Patients can have one of these types of concussions or they can have all five going on at the same time. The most important thing is that you identify the right treatment for the right problem. Once you identify that, and deliver the right treatments, we now have randomized controlled trials showing that the treatments are effective in getting people healthy faster.
"There's been grants given to us by the Chuck Noll Foundation that supports those statements from a science standpoint. The Chuck Noll Foundation has been critical to our success at UPMC in terms of advancing treatments for concussion and making people healthy faster. Getting people back to the sports they love faster, getting people back to the things they want to do safely and faster. The Chuck Noll Foundation has been instrumental in supporting our work and allowing us to do advanced research, proving that what we do in our clinic is effective and makes people better faster.
"Sports are not the number one cause of concussions. Slips and falls are. You can get hit in the head in a lot of different ways. And sports comprise a very small proportion. We are a sports medicine concussion program, so probably half of our patients are athletes and half of them are trauma. But sports are a great petri dish to study concussion. It allows us to get baseline data on patients. And then we see patients very quickly after their injury. We deliver their treatments quickly. They're motivated to get better. They have a goal to get better; to get back to sports and we can track them closely. Sports have allowed us to really understand concussion and research it. And then that allows us to deliver the right treatments to non-sports patients."
The UPMC Sports Medicine Concussion Program sees almost 20,000 patients a year according to Collins, with patients coming from all over the United States and abroad to seek treatment.
Collins shared the story of a recent patient, a young man from Australia who after not being able to find the proper care for his concussion, came to UPMC after trying to find a solution to his concussion symptoms for five years without any progress.
"I followed up with him this week through telemedicine and after the treatment he went through here in Pittsburgh, he is almost fully recovered," said Collins. "He told me how important Pittsburgh is to him now. He said, 'I'm wearing Steelers stuff. I fell in love with the city. That's where I got my life back.'
"It's a powerful thing knowing that we are the place to go to in the world for this injury, and we have data, we have research that supports everything we do, and that's what drives our practice, it's an evidence-based practice.
"Without the Steelers we wouldn't be where we're at because of the support that we've gotten from Mr. Rooney and the organization to do what we do workwise and that ducktails into the Chuck Noll Foundation."
One of the studies the Chuck Noll Foundation has funded is the WOMEN'S Health Concussion Study, which focuses on the impact concussions have on females, impacting them oftentimes in far greater ways than males.
"We've known for a long time that women have worse outcomes following concussion," said Dr. Anthony Kontos, the Research Director of the Concussion Research Laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh. "That's everything from symptoms to longer recovery to psychological health issues. This study really was designed to take findings from a study in 2017 and really kind of blow it up to better understand why and understand the kind of neurobiology behind what's going on after this brain injury to women's bodies and their health.
"It's already demonstrated benefits…but moving forward it can aid with other aspects, anything from improving our treatments, enhancing things like sleep, physical activity, but associated with even hormone therapies and things of that nature."
UPMC's Dr. Julie Rios focused in-depth on the WOMEN'S study, highlighting the progress that has been made and connections between concussions and women's reproductive health.
"It's understanding what concussion is doing physically to the body, not just the brain," said Rios, the Medical Director of the Center for Reproduction & Transplantation and lead researcher on the women's concussion research project. "This study is important because when we understand what is causing these differences between men's and women's concussions, we can start to figure out how to fix or prevent them and what is that best treatment. These studies are necessary to understand the why, so then we can fix it.
"Concussions can be common in sports, but concussions happen all the time. But to see how far we've come, and that a sports industry which is predominantly focused on men, I love that they are passionate about this project. You can see that in all our collaboration with the Chuck Noll Foundation. That's very inspiring."
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The Chuck Noll Foundation has awarded 40 grants made to innovative and early-career researchers totaling $4.3 million since its founding in 2017.
