It’s a long way from Boston to Denver — 5 Questions with David Howell

David Howell, alongside one of many of the research posters he has produced

When I now think of my friend, David Howell, I have this beautiful John Denver song in my head:

It’s a long way from LA to Denver
It’s a long time to hang in the sky
It’s a long way home to Starwood in Aspen
A sweet Rocky Mountain paradise
Oh, my sweet Rocky Mountain paradise

Granted, David just moved to Denver from Boston, not LA, but I can’t separate the melody from his journey, and the visions I have of him hanging out in the Rockies…..

David Howell PhD, ATC–and the team of researchers with whom he most recently worked at Children’s Hospital, Boston–has been one of the more prolific authors for CJSM in the last several years.  This summer, he moved to Children’s Hospital, Colorado, where he continues the pioneering research into kids’ sports safety that has been the hallmark of his career.

As lead author of two recently published CJSM studies, he was a natural interview for this, our most recent blog post and contribution to the recurring “5 Questions with CJSM” column.

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1) CJSM just published your new study, “Near Point of Convergence and Gait Deficits in Adolescents after Sport-Related Concussion.”  What would you state are the most important, new contributions to the literature your team made with this study?  And are there specific take-home points that the practicing clinician can use in their assessment of concussed teenagers?

DH: The idea of combining visual and gait-based measures in patients with a concussion was a result of an interdisciplinary collaboration. I was fortunate to work alongside colleagues from optometry/ophthalmology (Aparna Raghuram PhD, OD, and Ankoor Shah, MD, PhD) and sports medicine (William Meehan, MD and Michael O’Brien, MD) on this study. Based on our discussions, we were interested in the value and association of instrumented gait measures and vergence measures, since both have documented value for use within concussion evaluations. Additionally, both tests were relatively easy to administer within the sport concussion clinic at Boston Children’s Hospital. Read more of this post