In early 2018, several former ND football players from the Parseghian and Devine era of the 1960s and 1970s were interested in having a research study conducted on the later life neurological and other health conditions experienced in their cohort of former players. They formed a Steering Committee with three co-chairs: Rocky Bleier ’68, David Casper ’74, and Vagas Ferguson ’80. The initial Project Coordinator was Ed Ziegler ’70, who contacted Dr. Robert Stern, Professor of Neurology at BU School of Medicine and the Director of Clinical Research for the BU CTE Center. Dr. Stern and a group of BU researchers then began a collaborative effort with the former Notre Dame players to conduct the Phase One health outcomes survey study. The Steering Committee obtained contact information for their teammates, spread the word about the survey, and raised funds to partially support the study. The results of the Phase One study were recently published in the medical journal, JAMA Network Open. Click here to learn more about the Phase One study.

To learn more about the Independent Notre Dame Footballers Medical Research Project, go to the website: http://independentndfootballers.com.

In the original plan for the Independent Notre Dame Footballers Medical Research Project, former players were also going to be asked to participate in an interview about their detailed football and other contact sport history, provide additional medical and lifestyle history, complete a series of questionnaires about their mood and behavior, and be administered some cognitive tests over the phone (Phase Two). The participants were then going to be asked to complete similar assessments each year to gather longitudinal data (Phase Three). Since the initial planning of the Phase Two and Three studies, Dr. Stern and his colleagues at BU received a grant from the National Institutes of Health for the Head Impact & Trauma Surveillance Study (HITSS), conducted in collaboration with researchers at the Brain Health Registry (BHR) at the University of California, San Francisco.

The HITSS-Notre Dame (HITSS-ND) project is a specific substudy of the larger HITSS, focusing only on former Notre Dame football players who are age 40 and older. It will now serve as the Phase Two and Three Studies of the Independent Notre Dame Footballers Medical Research Project.

This study is fully independent of the University of Notre Dame, as was Phase One of the Independent Notre Dame Footballers Medical Research Project.