The BrainTrust Canada Concussion Clinic is now open on Industrial Avenue in Kelowna.
This facility helps concussion patients from the ages of 5 to 25 in their day-to-day recovery, so that they can get back to their activity of choice as soon as possible.
BrainTrust Canada CEO Mona Hennenfent says the process begins with a medical intake and a thorough evaluation.
"Then we'll start looking at symptoms," says Hennenfent. "Every day, we'll look at their symptoms, we'll monitor them, and provide strategies for them so that we can get those patients moving cognitively and physically, until they're ready to go back to school and sports."
Hennenfent says 1 in 5 kids are diagnosed with a concussion during any given sports season.
"We feel that they are at higher risk of a concussion," she says. "We know that children have developing brains that are more complex and take longer to heal. There aren't any programs like this right now that focus on children, so there's a really big gap in the Okanagan."
Olympic gold medalist and Kelowna's own Kelsey Serwa is all-too familiar with concussions - she most notably suffered one during a ski competition in Russia.
She says a competitive drive makes so many athletes want to keep going through a concussion, but that only hurts them in the long run.
"The actions that you take (when you get a concussion) and through your recovery process can really set you up for the rest of your life, because if you sustain a second injury, it makes the recovery that much worse," says Serwa.
Serwa adds that she's seen many athletic careers end from repeated or untreated concussions.
BrainTrust Canada hopes to make BC the second province to pass concussion safety legislation. Ontario was the first to do so after a 17-year-old athlete named Rowan Stringer passed away, having sustained two concussions over the span of a week.