Brian Hainline
Brian Hainline, MD is a neurologist, author, and public health advocate recognized for transforming sport into a force for the public good.
An academic clinician with a subspecialty in pain medicine, Dr. Hainline has been a leader in sports medicine and neurology for more than 35 years. He co-authored Drugs and the Athlete, helped establish global drug-testing and education programs, and co-edited Sports Neurology, the textbook that defined this evolving discipline. For 16 years, he served as Chief Medical Officer of the US Open Tennis Championships, where he unified medical care across all four Grand Slam tournaments and the ATP and WTA professional tours.
From 2013 to 2024, Dr. Hainline was the first Chief Medical Officer of the NCAA, where he founded and led the NCAA Sport Science Institute a national center of excellence advancing athlete safety, health, and performance through research, education, and policy. He was the principal architect of the NCAA-Department of Defense CARE Consortium, the largest prospective study of concussion and head-impact exposure in history. He also led the NCAA Mental Health Initiative, co-developing NCAA Mental Health Best Practices that set the national standard for collegiate athlete well-being.
Dr. Hainline has worked extensively with the International Olympic Committee, co-chairing its first consensus meetings on pain management and on mental health in elite athletes-initiatives that reshaped global policy and care. He also served on the Concussion in Sport Group, coauthoring the international consensus guidelines for concussion management. He is currently cochair of the second IOC consensus group on mental health in elite athletes.
A lifelong tennis advocate, Dr. Hainline played No. 1 singles and doubles at the University of Notre Dame, later serving as President of the U.S. Tennis Association and Vice President of the International Tennis Federation. He also wrote the original eligibility rules for wheelchair tennis.
He is Clinical Professor of Neurology at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine and author or co-author of more than 100 scholarly works and nine textbooks.