Final answer:
The writer engages readers by sharing personal anecdotes about the effects of CTE, making statistics more relatable. The main obstacle to understanding CTE's prevalence is that diagnosis can only be confirmed postmortem.
Step-by-step explanation:
The writer of "CTE: Football's Growing Medical Crisis" hooks readers who may not be interested in football or medicine by drawing them in with a personal touch. They achieve this through sharing quick anecdotes about the human cost of CTE in the introduction and conclusion of the article. This technique creates a connection with the reader by focusing on the personal and emotional aspects of the stories, thereby making the facts and statistics more impactful and relatable.
As for the greatest obstacle in determining how prevalent CTE is among current athletes, the article explains the difficulty arises because a CTE diagnosis cannot be confirmed until after the death of an individual, which requires an examination of the brain. This makes it challenging to understand the full extent of the disease's prevalence among living athletes.