March is Brain Injury Awareness Month, a national holiday led by the Brain Injury Association of America each year. Gregory Cranmer, Ph.D., associate professor in the Clemson University Department of Communication, is a scholar passionate about finding ways to provide meaningful and safe experiences for athletes through coaching, health interventions and socialization.
Sport-related concussions, or SRCs, are a significant health risk for athletes – and are generally underreported, increasing the risk for more severe outcomes. Cranmer and colleague Daniel Hartman, graduate teaching assistant in the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois, sought to understand the barriers that high school athletes across 20 sports face to reporting their concussion symptoms and how coaches play a part.
“Coaches play a pivotal role in promoting safety and health,” said Cranmer, “but concussion symptom reporting has been insufficient across the board.”
On September 10, 2024, Cranmer’s and Hartman’s findings were published in an article, “Using Psychological Reactance and Bandwagon Cues to Explain High School Sports Coaches’ Resistance to Concussion Communication Policies,” in the journal Communication & Sport.
On March 29, Cranmer was honored as a Distinguished Reseach Fellow for the Eastern Communication Association. This means he is now part of the top 1% of researchers for the oldest communication association in the country.
Cranmer has been a faculty fellow of the Robert H. Brooks Sports Science Institute since 2017. Click here to connect with him on LinkedIn.
