SAN FRANCISCO – The Pac-12 Conference announced Thursday that motivational speaker and former NFL defensive lineman, Devon Still, will serve as a keynote speaker for the upcoming Pac-12 Health Equity Summit at UCLA (Jan. 26-27, 2023). Still and his daughter, Leah, notably won the Jimmy V ESPY Award for Perseverance in 2015 following her battle with cancer. 

Still was formerly a captain for Penn State football and earned Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year honors in 2011. After being selected in the second round of the 2012 NFL Draft by the Cincinnati Bengals, Still played two seasons with the team before Leah was diagnosed with stage 4 neuroblastoma at age four. He was a member of the Bengals’ practice squad while caring for his daughter before ultimately stepping away from football. Leah, now 12 years old, has been in remission since 2015 while Still serves as a motivational speaker and instructor at the University of Pennsylvania.

Register for the Pac-12 Health Equity Summit
The Pac-12 Health Equity Summit, a two-day event titled Race, Gender, Identity and Accessibility Matters in Collegiate Athlete Health, examines healthcare delivery in collegiate athletics through the lens of diversity, equity and inclusion. Registration for the Health Equity Summit is open and available here. 

Still joins a distinguished group of medical practitioners, athletic training professionals, and Pac-12 student-athletes slated to speak on various panels at the Health Equity Summit. Key goals of the event are to provide examples of effective educational programming for collegiate sports medicine professionals, as well as strategies for creating a more inclusive environment for supporting diverse student-athlete populations.  

In addition to his keynote address to open the event schedule on Friday, Jan. 27, Still will speak on the “Expanding College Athletics Healthcare to Have an Impact on Lifelong Outcomes” panel ahead of the Summit’s final adjournment. Dr. Leon McDougle, Professor of Family Medicine with Tenure and Associate Dean for Diversity and Inclusion at The Ohio State University College of Medicine, will serve as the keynote speaker for Thursday’s event program. A full program brochure is available here. 

About the Pac-12 SAHWBI
Created in 2013, the Pac-12 Student-Athlete Health & Well-Being Initiative (SAHWBI) is a collective effort between the Pac-12 and its member universities to find ways to reduce injuries, share current best practices and latest studies, and conduct research to uncover new ways to keep student-athletes as safe as possible. Learn more at Pac-12.com/health.