Divya Jain (she/her) was deep in the world of sports and recreation medicine while studying kids and concussions for her Ph.D. But at a hospital in West Philadelphia, she began to see kids with head and neck injuries that had nothing to do with sports — say, from a fight at school. Whatever the reason, Jain noticed that compared to the young football players she saw, these kids had worse symptoms, and it usually took them a lot longer to seek care.
The experience led her to pursue an often-overlooked question: “How does your exposure to violence make it easier for you to get a brain injury, and make it harder for you to recover?” Now a third-year postdoctoral scholar at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, she’s studying the brain and behavioral effects of head trauma from intimate partner violence. One in three women globally experience violence from a partner or somebody else in their lifetime. Jain spends many days interviewing women who have been hurt and testing them for brain injuries.
It’s important to focus on such cases, which often fly under the radar, Jain said. “If we think about the number of pro football players versus the number of women — there are a lot more women just existing on the planet,” she said. An undiagnosed brain injury could lead to confusion, memory loss, and brain fog — all factors that could make it harder to remove oneself from an abusive situation.
It’s heavy work. To unwind, Jain watches TV shows like “Only Murders in the Building,” and spends time outside. She hopes to visit all the national parks in the lower 48 states.
—Theresa Gaffney
