In the midst of recent buzz surrounding the NFL and its admission of a link between football and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), more researchers in the Boston area are directing their focus to former NFL players and their health. As of late, Boston University has been behind some of the most widely publicized research, including its findings that 90 percent of ex-NFL players who elected to donate their brains to the study had CTE.
And now, some minds at Harvard are joining in.
Researchers at Harvard leading The Football Players Health Study are thinking more big picture compared to the work done at BU. They just released an app called Team Study meant to unlock a wealth of data about past NFL players' health and how it compares to that of the general public. In addition to focusing on the cognitive aspect of former football players' physical conditions, TeamStudy will also track their mobility and cardiac health."This is going to be an app that's transforming the way we capture what impact health problems and overall health impact what we do today," Alvaro Pascual-Leone - principal investigator of TeamStudy, associate director of The Football Players Health Study and professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School - said in a video outlining the study.
Any adult - regardless of whether they've played football, their gender, age or ethnicity - can use TeamStudy and contribute to the Harvard study. Participating users simply have to dedicate about 20 minutes per week to engaging with the app and, in turn, they will give researchers fodder for future findings.
William Meehan III, an associate director of The Football Players Health Study and assistant professor of pediatrics and orthopedics at Harvard Medical School, explained: "It's going to ask you basic questions. It's going to ask you to perform certain tasks. You're doing it on the fly, you get better results that way. I think athletes have unique problems and this is the best opportunity the field of sports medicine has had to discover these treatments, these preventative measures and get this data."
The fact that the researchers will be using an app to collect critical data on former NFL player health and how it measures up to that of the public is causing much excitement. Typically, a study of this nature can be held back because it would require participants to trek into a lab or clinic every week, making recruiting subjects who will stick with it difficult. However, the TeamStudy app offers a lot of promise, as it can measure all of the necessary markers wherever the users are.
Featured image via Jeffrey Beall, CC BY-SA 2.0.
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