Headway — CTE care navigator for families of contact-sport athletes
A practical companion for spouses, adult children, and parents of former football, hockey, and rugby players showing cognitive changes — symptom trackers, geographically filtered specialist directories, clinical-trial matching, and legal resources for disability and concussion claims.
Family members of retired contact-sport athletes showing cognitive or behavioral changes
- Symptom-progression tracker the family can share with neurologists
- Curated clinical-trial and research-study directory filtered by location and stage
- Family-focused legal and disability-claim resource library
- Peer-support group finder covering in-person and online options
CTE can only be definitively diagnosed post-mortem and the disease has no clear care pathway, so a high-profile death like Smith Jr.'s pushes worried families to search for guidance they cannot easily find.
Recent high-profile CTE death (Billy Ray Smith Jr., age 64, 2024) and June 2025 coverage of NFL widows' caregiver struggles confirm news-driven search spikes, but audience is narrow — only tens of thousands of contact-sport families.NFL widows struggled to care for former players with CTE ↗San Diego Chargers legend Billy Ray Smith Jr. passes away ↗
Established nonprofits (Concussion Legacy Foundation, CTE Society, Concussion & CTE Foundation) already publish caregiver guidebooks and resource hubs for free; no dedicated AI care-navigator app exists but the educational space is occupied.The CTE Guidebook For Patients & Caregivers ↗Resources - CTE Society ↗
General caregiver apps price at low subscription tiers (Caring Village, Healthcare Navigator $10-30/mo), but the target audience — often financially strained ex-athlete families — is served by abundant free nonprofit resources; legal-claims angle is lucrative but one-time.Caregiver Platform Pricing Comparison ↗Pricing Plans | The Healthcare Navigator ↗
CTE remains only definitively diagnosable post-mortem with no cure, and today's hockey/rugby/football players will age into symptoms over the next 30-40 years — a durable, growing problem space.NFL widows struggled to care for former players with CTE ↗
Symptom trackers, specialist directories and legal-resource pages are straightforward to build; clinical-trial matching leverages existing CLF research-program infrastructure — feasible but requires ongoing curation.Participate in Research | Concussion Legacy Foundation ↗