Mission & History

The Concussion Legacy Foundation UK (CLF UK) was founded in 2020 by Dr. Adam J White and Dr. Chris Nowinski. In the United Kingdom, there have been widespread concerns about concussions suffered in contact sports, like rugby union, rugby league and football. Initially, Adam teamed up with the Concussion Legacy Foundation to better understand how to support families and loved ones who have lost someone to Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE). Since then, Adam has developed and led the expansion of the Concussion Legacy Foundation’s work in the UK and currently serves as an advisor to the foundation.

CLF UK supports concussion and CTE research while translating new research findings into education programs, policies, and initiatives to allow sports to be played more safely. By training coaches to talk to their teams about concussions, Team Up Against Concussions is teaching youth athletes how to recognise and respond to concussions. The CLF Media Project trains sports media professionals and sports journalism students how to cover concussions accurately and with confidence. In our advocacy work, we have promoted removing repetitive head impacts for young people under our Stop Hitting Kids in the Head initiative. We have facilitated a wide array of social research on concussion and CTE in sport, including leading work on caregivers and the lived experiences of concussion and CTE.

CLF UK launched the Concussion Legacy Project, a brain bank partnership between CLF UK and Oxford University, with support from the Jeff Astle Foundation. With this brain bank collaboration, the UK joins Australia, Brazil, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States as a member of the CLF Global Brain Bank, an initiative to study CTE at research centres around the world.