News and Press
Concussion Alliance has been interviewed by Slate Magazine, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, PBS and NPR affiliates, and more.
For media inquiries, please contact us here
InDepth discussion: Tua Tagovailoa's concussion sparks concerns for Oklahoma student-athletes
September 19, 2024
Concussion Alliance Co-founder and CEO Conor Gormally joined a panel discussion on student-athlete safety with regard to concussions on Oklahoma City PBS affiliate OETA. The 15-minute InDepth segment of the Oklahoma News Report, produced and hosted by Cassidy Mudd, included Concussion Alliance Expert Advisory Board Member Julie Stamm, PhD, and Leander Walker, Athletic Trainer for Yukon Schools. See our blog post for more info.
Concussion Alliance with Malayka and Conor Gormally
July 30, 2024
”We are joined by Malayka Gormally and Conor Gormally, the founding members of Concussion Alliance, a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing concussion education and advocacy. Their initiative emerged from their personal experiences with the multifaceted challenges faced by individuals with concussions and their advocates.”
March 15, 2024, “Science journalist Isobel Whitcomb joins guest host Courtney Collins to discuss the newest science of concussion and how medical science is working to better disseminate the newest, best advice.”
At minute 36:30, Whitcomb describes Concussion Alliance Co-Founder and CEO Conor Gormally’s journey with four concussions and their difficulties getting appropriate care, his mother Malayka’s role in advocating for their care, and how the two of them founded Concussion Alliance.
March 17, 2024, by Isobel Whitcomb, for Slate Magazine Medical Examiner series, with the tagline, “I got a concussion. I didn’t get better. It turned out even my doctors had bought into a powerful myth.”
The first time Conor Gormally got a concussion, he felt as if he were standing on a ship at sea. A high school soccer player, he had decided to try out something new during his off-season: wrestling. His very first opponent caught him off guard, with a headbutt to the temple. “I stood up, then my horizon tilted to a 40-degree angle and I fell to the ground,” Gormally told me years later.
October 18, 2023, by Anna Edney, Bloomberg Prognosis Newsletter – Concussion care
The scare got me thinking about brain trauma. When I was a kid playing soccer long ago, it seemed like concussions weren’t taken very seriously. I had a feeling times have changed, but I didn’t really know what that meant. So I talked to Conor Gormally, who co-founded the Concussion Alliance…
October 11, 2023, blog post by Concussion Alliance.
This September, Concussion Alliance CEO and Co-Founder Conor Gormally presented at Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine as part of the college’s Clinical Integrations series, which spotlights patient voices and experiences to humanize and make concrete the academic and intellectual learning of medicine in the first two years of medical school education…
Many people with head injuries aren’t even being told about potentially helpful treatments.
October 6, 2023, by Tove Danovich for The Atlantic
I read books about concussions, a few chapters at a time… Conor Gormally, the executive director of Concussion Alliance, told me that he believes concussions are treatable injuries that just aren’t being treated by the average medical professional. “The biggest problem people face are barriers to care that they need, which is out there…”
Conor Gormally ’21, Kira Kunzman ’24, and Kaori Hirano ’25 discuss their work with Concussion Alliance, Gormally’s nonprofit organization centered around concussion education and advocacy.
September 1, 2023, by Erica Helgerud for Carleton News
Conor Gormally ’21 got their world turned upside down after they arrived at Carleton as a Class of 2020 first year in 2016. They got a concussion while playing a game of pick-up Frisbee during New Student Week and ended up taking medical leave after just one week of fall term. After a difficult winter term back at Carleton, they had to take leave again for the spring, meaning they had to delay their education to fully recover…
July 27, 2023, Bryn Mawr College News
My experience as a science writing intern has been incredibly positive! My largest project throughout this internship has been creating a webpage with another intern in the treatments section of the Concussion Alliance website. The webpage is on occupational therapy, specifically for concussion patients.
July 26, 2023, Bryn Mawr College News
As a program manager intern with Concussion Alliance this summer, I along with two other program managers have been designing weekly curricula, setting weekly schedules, running check-ins, social hours, project meetings, and guest speaker presentations, and managing two webpage projects being completed by pairs of science writers…
July 25, 2023, by Libby Denkmann and Alec Cowan, for KUOW (NPR Network) Soundside
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2020, approximately 12% of teenagers showed symptoms from experiencing a concussion. Conor Gormally was one of those kids. In fact, he experienced multiple concussions throughout his teenage years, all of which led to different symptoms…
July 15, 2023, blog post by Concussion Alliance
Concussion Alliance Co-Founder and CEO Conor Gormally presented at a combined Summer Symposium for the Colorado and New Mexico Associations of Athletic Trainers in Durango, Colorado, this July…
June 4, 2023, Brain Injury Professional
Website: www.concussionalliance.org/newsletter. The Concussion Alliance newsletter was created by the nonprofit of the same name, which was founded by a mother and son, Malayka and Conor Gormally. This biweekly contains synopses of recent research and news. The original publication of this edition is here; see page 32 of the online magazine.
June 3, 2023, blog post by Concussion Alliance
The following is a reproduction of the poster that Concussion Alliance presented at the 14th Annual World Congress on Brain Injury in Dublin, Ireland, on April 31. 2023. This poster is based on our College Students resource; the contributors to this poster, abstract, and the College Students resource are Conor Gormally, Malayka Gormally, Kaori Hirano, Kira Kunzman, and Dr. Elizabeth Sandel.
These new, free resources fill a gap for college students and administrators who lack support in managing non-sport-related concussions, which make up the majority of injuries on college campuses.
ST. LOUIS, April 12, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Of the more than 19 million students attending US post-secondary educational institutions each year, one in 75 sustain a concussion. The majority of these are not sport-related, yet sport-related mechanisms and contexts dominate research and the concussion return-to-learn protocols at the college level. There is a clear need for non-sport-specific, concussion-specific resources for college students navigating social and academic life with concussion. The impacts on mental health, academics, and social life can be significant…
January 27, 2023, by Chris Perkins, for the Sun Sentinel
Sandel said another issue with concussion recovery is it’s symptom-based, meaning when a player stops reporting symptoms, whether or not they’ve dissipated, they’re considered on the road to recovery. “Athletes don’t always report their symptoms, so symptom resolution may not actually be totally symptom resolutions because it’s [the athlete’s] report, Sandel said…
ST. LOUIS, Nov. 29, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Concussion Alliance's course (and webinar for non-physicians) is the most comprehensive CME on concussions and is ideal for physicians needing to meet CME requirements for the end of the year. Its unique format combines perspectives from brain injury medicine physiatrist Elizabeth Sandel, MD, and persistent post-concussion symptom patient Conor Gormally. It provides critical information and insights for healthcare providers in primary care, emergency medicine, neurology, physiatry, sports medicine, and more…
AUCKLAND, New Zealand, 24 October 2022/Press Release/ The Repercussion Group–an international working group of researchers, clinicians, and advocates–has submitted a position paper to the co-chairs of the Concussion in Sport Group (CISG) in advance of the 6th International Consensus Conference on Concussion in Sport on October 27-29. [Concussion Alliance is a member of the Repercussion Group.]
November 10, 2021, by Gisele Galoustian for Florida Atlantic University News Desk
Concussion Alliance is a team member of the Mind Over Matter (M.O.M.) project to “bolster patient-centered outcomes research and comparative effectiveness research in order to identify treatment options for TBI that are effective, acceptable, and meaningful to the veteran population.”
November 3, 2021, by Jamila Siddiqui for Carleton College Career Center Newsletter
As both an alumnus and multi-year host for externs and interns, Conor Gormally ‘21, Co-Founder, Co-Executive Director, and Internship Program Director at Concussion Alliance, has a wealth of advice to share with those interested in developing externships and internships in their organizations…
July 30, 2021, World Congress on Brain Injury Video Oral Presentation
Watch the 8-minute video of Co-founder Conor Gormally’s presentation at the July 2021 World Congress on Brain Injury. This video is a recorded oral presentation of our abstract, Bringing Concussion Education and Advocacy to the Next Generation of Healthcare and Public Health Professionals: Concussion Alliance’s Novel Service Learning Undergraduate Internship…
May 12, 2021, video recording of Repercussion group and TBIN international discussion
Co-founder Conor Gormally gives a 15-minute presentation to the AUT TBI Network and Repercussion group, a new international focus group on concussions. Conor starts at 58 minutes and 30 seconds. In his presentation, Conor discusses his experience as well as the founding of Concussion Alliance…
Winter 2021, Carleton College Voice
Shortly after arriving on campus as a first-year, Conor Gormally ’21 suffered a concussion playing Ultimate Frisbee. It marked the fourth time he’d sustained a head injury (the others came in high school, while he was playing soccer), but this time his recovery was notably slower…
February 3, 2021, interview with Kim Justus on Brain Injury Radio.
Malayka and Conor Gormally are the co-founders of Concussion Alliance, a nonprofit organization founded to create a one-stop-shop of reliable, easily accessible, evidence-based information about concussion treatments and resources to find healthcare specialists…
November 30, 2020, Carleton College News
Malayka Gormally is a proud Carleton parent. Her son Conor Gormally ’21 is an economics major at Carleton, and together they founded Concussion Alliance, a nonprofit organization based out of Seattle whose mission is to provide reliable, evidence-based information about preventing and treating concussions that is easily accessible to everyone.
July 14, 2020, Alexandra de Leon for Harborview Injury Prevention & Research Center, University of Washington
In a new interview featured in Concussion Alliance, Dr. Monica Vavilala explains the importance of the Return to Learn (RTL) program. “Return to Learn refers to the idea that students with a concussion should have attention paid to the pace and nature of how they return to academics,” explained HIPRC director Dr. Vavilala.
July 29, 2019, for Concussions, General, Teachaids
Earlier this month, our CrashCourse concussion education videos were shown as a component of the Sports and Traumatic Brain Injury conference in Washington. This presentation was delivered with the partnership of Concussion Alliance, which contributed educational materials for the conference.
May 28, 2019, Kootenay Co-op Radio
Join Neil Sorochan for another edition of Kootenay Morning on Wednesday, May 28th. You'll learn about the Concussion Alliance from Rebekah Kissel…