NFL Under Fire For Reportedly Withholding Funding For NIH Concussion Study

ABC World News (12/22, story 13, 0:25, Muir) reported that the NFL is “under fire” for “withholding $16 million from researchers investigating football-related head trauma.” The NFL was funding the study, which is being conducted by the National Institutes of Health, but the league was “reportedly critical of the doctor leading the project.” NFL officials are “disputing the report.”

The Washington Post (12/23, Larimer) reports on the ESPN “Outside the Lines” story, which claimed that the NFL “‘backed out’ of the planned seven-year, $16 million research project to attempt to diagnose chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in living patients.” The study was originally “to have been paid for by a $30 million grant from the NFL made to the National Institutes of Health in 2012.” However, “the NIH will fund the study itself, according to a Tuesday morning news release.”

The New York Times (12/23, B9, Belson, Subscription Publication) reports that the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke awarded the grant “as part of a long-term study of brain disease in former NFL and college football players, many of whom sustained multiple concussions on the field,” but the NFL “did not help pay for the grant.”

Related Links:

— “NFL disputes ESPN report on brain study funding; NIH says no NFL veto,” Sarah Larimar, Washington Post, December 22, 2015.

Posted in In The News.