Bob Wade, coordinator of athletics for the Baltimore public schools, said he was not familiar with pre-concussion baseline testing but that he has been working for about five years to get athletic trainers for the city's 19 public schools.
The testing is not on the agenda in Baltimore County either, but athletics coordinator Ron Belinko said that "if a student had a history of concussions, we would recommend they get this test, which costs $75 a student and could be administered by several of the sports medicine centers."
Belinko, who said county statistics don't show a big increase in the number of concussions, added that the research coming from the Howard County program could help officials in other jurisdictions determine the need for such testing.
Palermo, who suffered two concussions as a volleyball player at Holy Cross in Delran, N.J. in the late 1990s, became interested in baseline testing programs as a student at Rutgers, which had a pilot program. She was instrumental in bringing it to Howard County.
A $4,000 grant from the Howard County Injury and Violence Prevention Coalition paid for preliminary studies and seminars with athletic directors, athletic trainers and coaches, said Mike Williams, coordinator of athletics for Howard County. The county schools budget pays for the $750 cost per high school for the software and storing results.
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