I am currently an MPH student at Northwestern University studying Community Health Research, and I hope to become a physician who works with young athletes in the future. At 14 years old, I was a level nine gymnast with a broken back. Well, I had stress fractures on the lumbar vertebrae of my low back. Like many other young athletes, I was later diagnosed with "repetitive trauma.” In fact, amongst the many athletes I met during my time as a Big Ten student-athlete, almost all

by Guest Blogger, Andrea Coulis Andrea Coulis recently completed her MPH at Northwestern University and is now Director of Program Strategy at a breast cancer nonprofit organization. She has been a court-appointed special advocate for abused and neglected children in Cook County for over 8 years and holds a special interest in keeping children safe . Almost all of us have been guilty of letting social media affect our moods: a quick jolt of excitement after receiving a “like

As a sexual health educator in Chicago Public Schools, I carried around a question box with me to all my classes. At the end of each lesson, I would tell all the students that they could write any question imaginable they had about sexual health and place it into the box, so that the students could retain their anonymity. Before I began teaching, I thought the responses in the box would be about conventionally taboo topics such as the anatomy of genitalia, masturbation, or th

Some of my most memorable experiences during middle school and high school came from my time on sports teams. I made rich, lasting friendships with my cross country and track teammates and developed a love for fitness that continues today. For other student-athletes, however, their participation in sports teams can have a different, more serious, lasting impact: traumatic brain injury (TBI). Traumatic brain injury is caused by trauma to the head that disrupts normal function