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Senate Co-Sponsorship Memoranda
Senate of Pennsylvania
Session of 2021 - 2022
Regular Session
MEMORANDUM
| Posted: | January 13, 2022 02:41 PM |
|---|---|
| From: | Senator Steven J. Santarsiero |
| To: | All Senate members |
| Subject: | Recognizing January 30, 2022 as “CTE Awareness Day” in Pennsylvania |
| Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) is a degenerative brain disease that appears in persons with a history of repetitive brain trauma sustained over a period of years and is caused by a buildup of an abnormal protein called Tau in the brain leading to brain cell death. While the risk of developing CTE is greatest with athletes and military veterans, who frequently endure repeated sub-concussive blows to the head from playing contact sports or suffer traumatic injury from military training or blasting, it also appears in survivors of domestic abuse and those with epilepsy. Currently, CTE can only be definitively diagnosed after death through postmortem neuropathological analysis. Advocacy organizations, health care providers and institutional researchers are dedicated to studying the causes and symptoms of CTE in order to enable parents and families to make informed decisions regarding the best interests of their children in youth sports and to develop an earlier diagnostic tool so patients may address these symptoms as early as possible. By recognizing January 30, 2022 as “CTE Awareness Day” in Pennsylvania, we, along with the Patrick Risha CTE Awareness Foundation and other organizations, hope to help loved ones reflect on those lost to CTE, how to help those suffering with the disease, and most importantly how to stop the disease. |
Introduced as SR219