High school football has become a public health crisis. It’s time to take action | Nathan Kalman-Lamb and Derek Silva

There should be no sugar-coating the recent deaths of six teenagers. If we genuinely want to protect our kids, we need to take seriously the question of abolishing tackle football

Six teenagers have now died while playing school football in less than three weeks. This astonishing rash of football-related school deaths should be understood as nothing less than a public health emergency. It is also a clarion call to question why we are exposing our young people to such a dangerous activity at all, much less in institutions designed to care for and nurture them.

The first four of these recent deaths were due to apparently heat-related causes and the latest two due to head trauma. Five of the athletes were high schoolers, the eldest only 16, and one was a 13-year-old eighth-grade student. The young athletes who died were Ovet Gomez-Regalado, age 15, in Kansas City; Semaj Wilkins, age 14, in Alabama; Jayvion Taylor, age 15, in Virginia; Leslie Noble, age 16, in Maryland; Caden Tellier, age 16, in Alabama; and Cohen Craddock, age 13, in West Virginia.