Former Washington running back Ken Jenkins, 60, and his wife Amy Lewis on Friday delivered 50,000 petitions demanding equal treatment for Black players to Senior U.S. District Judge Anita B. Brody in Philadelphia, who is overseeing the massive settlement. Former players who suffer dementia or other diagnoses can be eligible for a payout.
Race norming is sometimes used in medicine as a rough proxy for socioeconomic factors that can affect someone’s health. Experts in neurology said the way it’s used in the NFL settlement is too simplistic and restrictive, and has the effect of systematically discriminating against Black players. The NFL, which foots the bill, began challenging claims by the hundreds, according to the claims website.
“Using race-specific norms can be enormously consequential, and the adjustments may often make the difference in a clinician’s determination of cognitive impairment and a determination of normal functioning for retired NFL players seeking benefits,” special masters David A. Hoffman and Wendell E. Pritchett wrote in the Aug. 20 decision.
Race-based adjustments for neurology -- known as “Heaton norms” -- were designed in the early 1990s by Dr. Robert Heaton to estimate how socioeconomic factors affect someone’s health. They are widely used, but in recent years, scientists in the field have begun to recognize the limitations of the normative comparison groups they have used for years.
Dr. Francis X. Conidi, a neurologist and former president of the Florida Neurologic Society, who has treated hundreds of former NFL players, wrote a critique of the settlement’s assessment program in 2018, saying it had developed a system where players would be classified with “fictional diagnostic categories” of level 1, level 1.5 and level 2 neurocognitive impairments. Only those classified as levels 1.5 or 2 would qualify for a settlement.
The raw score of 15 for naming animals in the language section became a 35 for whites and 41 for Blacks. And the raw score of 51 for “block design” in the visual perception section became a 53 for whites but 60 for Blacks. “So the male Black athletes that we saw would be compared essentially to a group of otherwise healthy Black individuals with a similar number of years of education and of the same age,” Asken said.
Horrendous! I have friends from the NFL who have CTE. Every life should be worth the same
JFC.
Diana_Chumley
I'm sorry...what?!?!?!
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