About Nora Fotuhi
My name is Nora Fotuhi and I am a senior at Langley High School in McLean, Virginia. In my free time, I enjoy participating in athletic activities as well as helping out my community. Over the past several years, I have played in a variety of different sports including soccer, basketball, tennis, volleyball, water polo, horseback riding, swimming, and track.
As a student-athlete myself, I have witnessed several of my friends suffer physically and mentally from concussions. For years, I felt useless when faced with my limited ability and knowledge to help them. To an extent, I could serve a contribution no more impactful than an emotional support dog could. It wasn’t until my best friend Jennifer fell off her horse and returned with bandages wrapped around her head. She developed severe headaches, could not think straight, and was super sensitive to light and sound for six months.
After feeling terrible for Jennifer and following my great passion for neuroscience, I decided to take action to make an impact in this field. After much thought about different things I could do to help young athletes prevent and address concussions, I decided to start a non-profit organization called Concussion Superstars. One of the activities I initiated as a part of my organization was to organize workshops in my house to educate student athletes about concussion prevention and recovery. Someone who attended my workshops and learned about concussions would become a “superstar” in this field, which is where the name “Concussion Superstars” came from.
To reach student athletes beyond my school and community, I decided to start this website.
I feel that it is crucial for kids and young adults to not only be knowledgeable about how they can prevent concussions but also properly recover from a concussion. I want all student athletes, especially those who play contact sports like football to know that rushing back to playing, without proper concussion recovery, will delay their full recovery and complicate their symptoms.
During the Covid pandemic when schools were closed for months, I gathered all my notes about concussion prevention and treatment and wrote a book, titled: The Brain That Recovers: Fascinating Facts About the Brain and How It Can Overcome Concussions.” You can get a copy of this book from Amazon.com
Mission
I have started my organization, Concussion Superstars, to achieve the following goals:
-
Provide education material for children and young adults on how they can prevent concussion in sports.
-
Provide information for coaches and parents on what specific things they can do to help children minimize their risk for traumatic brain injury
-
Organize lectures at school so that experts can teach children about these topics
-
Form a coalition for children and young adults who are committed to concussion prevention, by becoming “Concussion Superstars.”
What do you need to do to become a concussion superstar?
I believe that the more kids know about the importance of protecting their brain and the long term consequences of concussion, the more likely it is that they will be careful about preventing a trauma to their brain. I want to see that more and more children and young adults become proactive and enthusiastic about concussion prevention. So I have set the following criteria for anyone who wants to become a “Concussion Superstar”:
-
Believe that it is important to prevent concussion; the more a person is aware that concussions can be prevented, the more likely it is that they will have fewer concussions in the future.
-
Must feel that it is important to report if they have had symptoms due to a concussion; many kids who are playing sports prefer to stay in the game and don’t always let their coaches know that they had some symptoms after they hit their head or if they collided with another athlete.
-
Must support their friends who had a concussion by letting know that their brain is more important than anything else; it is OK if they stop playing, even if it means they won’t win a game without their friend who had trauma to his/her brain.