{"id":540825,"date":"2010-04-22T14:43:15","date_gmt":"2010-04-22T18:43:15","guid":{"rendered":"tag:blogs.courant.com,2010:\/capitol_watch\/\/9.76558"},"modified":"2010-04-22T15:11:20","modified_gmt":"2010-04-22T19:11:20","slug":"concussions-bill-would-protect-student-athletes-measure-passes-the-state-senate-and-heads-to-the-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/540825","title":{"rendered":"Concussions Bill Would Protect Student Athletes; Measure Passes The State Senate And Heads To The House"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>        <span lang=\"EN\"><\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">The state Senate unanimously passed&nbsp;a bill today that would protect&nbsp;student athletes by educating their coaches about head injuries and concussions. <\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">The bill would also&nbsp;require coaches to pull intramural and interscholastic&nbsp;athletes from games, competitions or practices if they show signs of a concussion, or if they are diagnosed with a concussion. Athletes suspected of having such an injury would have to stop practicing or competing for at least 24 hours and until they receive written clearance from a medical professional.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">Under the bill, anyone who holds a coaches permit issued by the state school board would have to be trained periodically&nbsp;in how to recognize and respond to head injuries and concussions. The course would be part of routine training for coaches, and lawmakers say it would not result in extra costs for school districts.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">All coaches would be required to complete an initial training course before starting to coach next school year. Beginning in the 2015-2016 school year, coaches would have to complete a refresher course every five years. <\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">Several people testified in favor of the concussions bill at a March education committee public hearing, including Michael Savage, the executive director Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference. Savage said the bill protects the health, safety and well being of students and his group has developed&nbsp;a training course on concussions. <\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">The bill still needs to be voted on by the House of Representatives and signed by the governor before becoming law. If it is signed, Connecticut would become&nbsp;only the third state in the country to&nbsp;have a&nbsp;concussions law&nbsp;to protect student athletes. Oregon and Washington&nbsp;passed&nbsp;such laws last year. &nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">Sen. Thomas Gaffey, D-Meriden, co-chairman of the&nbsp;education committee,&nbsp;cited U.S. Center for Disease Control statistics when&nbsp;discussing&nbsp;concussions today.&nbsp;Each year, there are 3.5 million sports-related concussions, he said, adding that&nbsp;more than 40 percent of athletes with concussions or serious injuries return to&nbsp;practice and competition before they should.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The state Senate unanimously passed&nbsp;a bill today that would protect&nbsp;student athletes by educating their coaches about head injuries and concussions. The bill would also&nbsp;require coaches to pull intramural and interscholastic&nbsp;athletes from games, competitions or practices if they show signs of a concussion, or if they are diagnosed with a concussion. Athletes suspected of having such [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-540825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=540825"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540825\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}