Children would be sidelined from contact sport for two weeks after being cleared of concussion symptoms under a landmark policy released by the Australian Institute of Sport and Australian Medical Association.
The collaborative position statement made on Saturday tackles the growing health concerns about concussion and launches a federally funded one-stop website.
The site features reliable and up-to-date clinical information, videos and decision-making tools and has specialised flow charts and guidelines for athletes, parents, teachers, coaches and medical practitioners.
The news comes one week after Gundagai teen Lui Polimeni's tragic on field concussion in an under-16s game against the Tumut Blues.
The 15-year-old was flown to Canberra Hospital in a critical condition suffering severe stroke symptoms and his family made the heart-breaking decision to switch off his life support on Tuesday.
There has been a 60 per cent rise in the number of people admitted to hospital for sport-related concussion in the past decade, but chief medical officer of the AIS, Dr David Hughes, said general knowledge about concussion and its management at a community sporting level was poor.
"In Australia we don't really have accurate collection of figures for incidences of concussion," he said.
By extrapolating international figures it is estimated there are as many as 100,000 cases of sports-related concussion annually.
Dr Hughes said children were particularly vulnerable to concussion because their brains were still developing.
"Our review of the literature, and that's ongoing, is that children are more prone to concussion and take longer to recover than adults," he said.
"It's important to point out that the 14 day sit-out is not from their concussion to when they return to sport, it's 14 days of being symptom free."
He stressed the message was not about deterring people from playing contact sports, shown to deliver great emotional, physical and mental health benefits to children, but to ensure all sporting environments were as safe as possible.
"We want to inform people and alleviate their anxiety by giving them information and the tools to recognise and act when concussion is suspected," he said.
"We all need to be vigilant when it comes to recognising the warning signs.
"Any athlete with suspected concussion must be reviewed by a medical practitioner. A simple piece of advice that applies to everyone is: "If in doubt, sit it out."