We do have a couple of follow ups.
I want to make sure I give an opportunity for our person who heads up our athletic trainers Andrew Little and also Dr. Stan Herring from Harborview University of Washington Medical Center to talk very briefly just a little bit about the program and then I can comment on another follow up question on this.
and we certainly appreciate them taking the time to come down here and being able to present.
So Andrew Little is the taller one.
Hi I'm Andrew Little.
I'm the athletic training program manager from Seattle Children's Hospital and I'm just here to really talk more about what this looks like from a front line perspective.
Athletic trainers take policy for a district and they implement this as for health care for high school students on the front line.
This is our ninth year.
It's also our ninth year of actually taking these actions that we're writing about and that you guys are approving.
We've been doing this for a while so I can speak a little bit to that from education to to coaches and families to education athletes from baseline perspectives and baseline evaluations for athletes and contact inclusion sports to having time to sit down with coaches and actually not just go over a policy but talk about how we're going to implement this in real life to sit down and say when an athlete gets a concussion this is what you're going to do coach.
This is what you're going to do assistant coach.
we're going to activate with mom we're going to activate our emergency action emergency action plan and communicate with parents and school nurses and our athletic directors.
So everybody will be in the know and then take that and provide the education from the work that Dr. Herring has done with the CDC and implement a full perspective not just a simple policy.
So that's the work that's actually already been going on in this district for nine years.
Beyond that the follow up care that goes into the work from our sport concussion program and the pretty robust care that we're providing already is what I would say.
The major thing that I would say for tonight is how does this fully go in and does this change anything for us as a group of athletic trainers.
No this is work that we're already doing.
This is work that we're already educating a lot of coaches at high school at the high school level.
This is also work that we're already implementing and in with the coaches and the athletic directors within the school as well as the school nurses.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Good evening.
My name is Stan Herring and I appreciate the time that the board gives me.
I'm here to support what Andrew said and to see if I can also be a resource for you.
I'm a physician at the University of Washington office at Harborview.
I've spent my professional career interested in brain health of active people and athletes.
I direct the UW Medicine Sports Health and Safety Institute.
I co-direct the UW Medicine Sports Concussion Program.
I probably co-directed a few more things that someone's probably appointed me to while I've been standing here.
and we have a strong and long-term commitment to the importance of keeping young people active.
It's the single most important thing we can do to assure the health of the people that were here tonight.
We want to keep that safe.
I've read your concussion policy.
the way it's been adapted the sudden cardiac arrest policy the board should be commended for being forthright interested and concerned about the welfare it's really was quite an honor to sit here tonight and listen to these impassioned speeches and makes you proud to be from Seattle and I think that Perhaps my voice is more quiet but my interest is no less intense in making sure that we do everything we can to protect the brain health of young people.
Why would that their brains develop into the leaders which I could see they're going to be.
And the University of Washington Harborview Seattle Children's remains committed to working with the school district to everything we can on the health and safety side to protect these young athletes and scholars and students.
So thank you.
Thank you.
Director Harris.
I'm very pleased to follow up Director Blandford's questions at the last board meeting about where we stand as a school district and as a state with respect to concussions traumatic brain injury etc.
This is the gentleman I was speaking about.
He is a world wide hero on these issues and I could not be more pleased that he's down here.
Thank you sir.
It's on videotape.
We'll send them the link.