On behalf of all Football Stakeholders in England, The FA is issuing a call for research relating to heading load in football. This follows consultation with the FA’s Brain Health Research Expert Panel and the Medical representatives of other football stakeholders.  The research question is:

How can we accurately and consistently establish methods of measuring heading load in football?

Researchers should consider all levels of the football pyramid including men’s / women’s, adult / youth, grassroots/ professional elements of the game, taking into account both matchplay and particularly training.  Researchers should also give consideration as to how these measurements can be utilised to help further understand the relationship of heading exposure to long term neurocognitive outcomes and also how they relate to the wider landscape of head impact exposure

For further information on what is required to submit an application please click here.  Please email your submission as a PDF document with the email subject CALL FOR RESEARCH APPLICATION to angela.fitzgerald@thefa.com. Please also address any queries you may have regarding the process to this email.

The deadline for submitting an application is 31st July 2026.

In 2017, The FA and The PFA funded an independent research study from the University of Glasgow. This study, known as the FIELD study, is published in the New England Journal of Medicine, and used medical records to understand the risk of dementia in ex-professional footballers.

In 2018, The FA and the PFA appointed the University of Nottingham to conduct an independent research study into the long-term brain health of former professional footballers. The first two FOCUS studies, led by Weiya Zhang at the Versus Arthritis Centre for Sport, Exercise and Osteoarthritis, have been peer reviewed and published by Sports Medicine - Open.