The first principle, as I have
already touched on briefly, is the right to participate in decision - making; the second is the principle of free, prior, and informed consent; and the third is a «duty to consult».
When I finally had a chance to speak, we were
already running over the 2 1/2 hours allotted for the roundtable, so I was only able to
briefly touch on two of my many message points: one, that the game can be and is being made safer, and two, that, based
on my experience following a high school football team in Oklahoma this past season - which will be the subject of a MomsTEAM documentary to be released in early 2013 called The Smartest Team - I saw the use of hit sensors in football helmets as offering an exciting technological «end around» the problem of chronic under - reporting of concussions that continues to plague the sport and remains a major impediment, in my view, to keeping kids safe (the reasons: if an athlete is allowed to keep playing with a concussion, studies show that their recovery is likely to take longer, and they are at increased risk of long - term problems (e.g. early dementia, depression, more rapid aging of the brain, and in rare cases, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, and in extremely rare instances, catastrophic injury or death.)