Concussion Alliance CEO spoke to 2nd-year Medical School Students in California
By Concussion Alliance. This article was initially published in the 1/23/25 edition of our Concussion Update newsletter; please consider subscribing.
On January 13th, 2025, Concussion Alliance Co-founder and CEO Conor Gormally presented to the class of 2nd-year medical school students at Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine in Vallejo, California. The presentation was part of Touro’s Clinical Integrations series, which brings in patients and educators to ground medical students’ academic learning in real-world lived experience. Conor’s presentation, The Eight-Year Headache: Concussions, Persisting Symptoms, and Knowledge Translation Gaps in the Healthcare System, combined Conor’s personal story as a concussion patient with critical education for future healthcare providers.
Conor spoke about their experience with multiple concussions, navigating the healthcare system, barriers they faced to care, and living with persisting symptoms to help these students understand the human aspect of living with a chronic illness, especially one that was mismanaged during its initial years. Conor then spoke about the epidemiological scale of concussion and Traumatic Brain Injury and how their experience as a patient was a microcosm of a hidden epidemic––one made worse by broad cultural misperceptions of concussion, barriers to continuing education for current and future healthcare providers, and the underlying issue of slow knowledge of knowledge from research to clinical