The Petrie-Flom Center at Harvard Law School is pleased to announce our involvement with the new “Harvard Integrated Program to Protect and Improve the Health of NFLPA Members.” The Program will be created through a $100 million grant to Harvard Medical School from the National Football League Players Association in order to launch a transformative 10-year initiative. The Petrie-Flom Center will work to address the critical ethical, legal, and policy issues relevant to the health of current, future, and retired players.
Read more from Harvard Law School:
[HLS Assistant Professor of Law I. Glenn Cohen, faculty co-director of the Center and] one of this year’s Fellows of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, will be a co-investigator on the 10-year project along with Holly Fernandez Lynch, the Center’s executive director.
The project, which will be known as the Harvard Integrated Program to Protect and Improve the Health of NFLPA Members, was announced on Jan. 28 by Harvard Medical School and the National Football League Players Association (NFLPA).
“Holly and I will be assuming leadership over one of the six aims of the project, the one that will address the ethical, legal and policy issues relevant to the health and health care of current future, and retired players,” said Cohen. “We will begin the 10-year project by conducting ‘listening tours’ in collaboration with the NFLPA, where we will get current and retired NFL players and their families to help us shape the agenda for our legal and ethical analysis. We will also be involving our students and colleagues at HLS and across the university in trying to wrestle with some of the thorniest legal and ethical issues involved, including: the appropriate role of players and teams in the management and employment and accreditation of team doctors and other medical staff, the privacy of players’ medical information and the ethical development of testing for injury, and liability and compensation for injured players. I feel privileged that the players will be entrusting us and the rest of the team with this vital responsibility.”
Cohen and Lynch will also serve as ethics consultants for the entire project, to help ensure that the clinical research is performed according to the appropriate ethical standards.
Said Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow: “I am delighted and proud that the Petrie-Flom Center will be working with Harvard Medical School and others across the University on this extraordinary and much-needed project, and I am confident that together they will do something important for football, its players, and the country.”
For more information, see these selected news articles announcing the partnership:
- HMS partners with NFL Players Association, Harvard Gazette
- NFL Players Association Gives Harvard $100 Million Grant to Study Player Health, Harvard Crimson
- NFL Players Union Funds $100 Million Harvard Study on Injury, The New York Times
- NFL Union Funds Study of Injury Risk, Wall Street Journal
- Harvard to lead $100m study of NFL players, The Boston Globe
- NFL Players Association, Harvard planning $100 million player study, CNNHealth
- Harvard Picked by NFL Union for $100 Million Medical Study Grant, Bloomberg
- Report: $100M study goes to Harvard, ESPN
- Ten-Year, $100 Million Research to Focus on NFL Players’ Health, Slate
- Harvard Medical School Awarded $100 Million by NFL Players Association to Study Football Injuries, BostInno
