Completed and Foundational Concussion Research Projects

Early research helped position the Minds Matter Concussion Program to become a Frontier Program at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia with a diverse research portfolio.

Key Completed and Foundational Research Projects

Minds Matter: Concussion Care at CHOP

A Chair’s Initiative –- This program, funded by the Department of Pediatrics Chair's Initiative at CHOP and led by Kristy Arbogast, PhD, Christina L. Master, MD, and Matthew Grady, MD, was a two-year initiative to develop and refine a state-of-the-science standardized pediatric concussion management program across all CHOP departments that diagnose triage and treat concussion. These include primary care, sports medicine, emergency medicine, neurology, trauma and afterhours triage call center. Impact evaluation was conducted leveraging CHOP’s EHR and provider surveys.

Concussion Registry Development

The initial objective of this concussion research, led by Kristy Arbogast, PhD and funded by a Children's of Hospital Research Institute Clinical and Translational Research Award, was to test the feasibility of creating a comprehensive registry of patients 5-21 years old diagnosed with concussion within the CHOP Care Network. Data capture how concussions are assessed, diagnosed, and treated.

Tasks involved a review of current data fields in CHOP’s electronic health records for capturing subject concussion information, as well as data collection from patients presenting for new concussion evaluation. Patients were recruited from CHOP specialty care outpatient clinics, including sports medicine and orthopedics. By capturing a standardized and comprehensive data set on every child with concussion, the Minds Matter Concussion Program team is forming a valuable resource that can be utilized to answer other important questions about prevention, diagnosis and management of this common injury.