TeachAids CrashCourse Education for more than 100M

The end of 2022 marks the realization of a dream. 

We founded TeachAids in 2009, with a goal of tackling the world’s most pressing health topics. The global success of our HIV initiative presented us with a new and worthy challenge: could we replicate our methodology to address another major issue?

To test this theory, we chose a public health issue that was completely different from infectious disease. We also wanted to focus on new regions and markets that we hadn’t previously focused on with our HIV work. But we chose a topic which was equally mired in misinformation and politics – concussions in sports.

HIV had been a daunting subject to address. It was considered deeply taboo and previous attempts at public health education on the topic had been banned. People were even arrested for distributing "explicit materials". We were warned that concussion education was similarly fraught with obstacles and opponents. Addressing it effectively could bring us into direct conflict with several multibillion-dollar industries accused of downplaying the issue of head injuries.

But the scale and impact of head injuries, especially in sports, could not be ignored. In sports culture, where athletes were told to “tough it out” and even lauded for playing through injuries, there was a huge stigma against reporting concussions, even among youth. We decided to focus on protecting and educating children and their surrounding communities. 

CrashCourse distribution agreements secured to reach more than 100M people

Now, several years after we began our concussion work, we are thrilled to announce that we have completed our rollout in the United States, and international partnerships have been established in Canada, Great Britain and Australia. With the support of the nation’s largest sports organizations and advocacy groups, our CrashCourse concussion education is now being actively distributed and used to educate youth, their families, coaches, and the larger athletic and health communities. Here are some of our notable milestones from this journey:

• Partnerships formed with 24 U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee Sports Governing Bodies, among others.
• Our nation’s top brain injury organizations implemented CrashCourse into their product offerings, including Brain Injury Association of America, National Association of State Head Injury Administrators, Palo Alto Veterans Association, and the Centers for Disease Control.
• The National Council of Youth Sports serving 60MM youth ages 14 and under, adopted CrashCourse.
• CrashCourse Ambassadors have joined our mission such as Katie Ledecky (7-time Olympic Gold Medalist), Natalie Coughlin (12-time Olympic Medalist), Nneka Ogwumike (former WMBA MVP), and Kate Courtney (2-time World Cup Champion).
• 100+ leading Industry, Sports and Medical experts, including Chief Medical Officers Dr. Josh Bloom (USA Baseball), Dr. George Chiampas (U.S. Soccer), Dr. Brian Hainline (NCAA), and Dr. Michael Stuart (USA Hockey).    
• Arkansas became the first state in the country to make our VR-based concussion education available to every public junior high and high school.
• North Carolina became the first state to require parents and athletes in all sports to use CrashCourse.
• We are grateful to the media outlets that help share 200+ news articles about CrashCourse resources, including Forbes, USA Today, New York Times, Washington Post, NBC, ABC and CBS, among others. 
• We are honored to have received numerous recognitions, including the latest 2022 Sharecare Emmy Award 
• Under the leadership of Harvard’s Dr. Daniel Daneshvar, we launched the TeachAids Institute for Brain Research and Innovation, to study uses of novel technology to help change the culture of concussion reporting. The institute published peer-reviewed papers, including a Stanford-Harvard study showing how student athletes have increased their intent to report concussions after viewing CrashCourse education.

As we wind down the product development stage of the CrashCourse initiative, we want to give special thanks to the thousands of volunteers, including our team of advisors, who made this achievement possible. Our heartfelt gratitude extends to the Taube Stanford Concussion Collaborative for their philanthropic support.

We dedicate our CrashCourse initiative to the legendary Coach Dick Gould. With 17 NCAA titles, Coach Gould is among five coaches having won the most championships in any sport in NCAA history. After winning several Lifetime Achievement Awards, Coach Gould retired from Stanford University to write his newly released book (“Anatomy of a Champion”), and joined TeachAids as our Vice Chairman, dedicating 50+ hours a week to make the CrashCourse mission possible. We could not have done this without him!