Health & Safety

A pediatric sports medicine expert asks parents not to buy into the idea that sport specialization will increase their chances of playing sports in college, to listen to the data linking specialization and increased risk of serious overuse injury, and recommends that kids not play sports more hours per week than their age.

A pediatric sports medicine specialist says that to prevent youth sports injuries we need to "think like Sweden" in setting as a goal zero youth sports injuries; use protective equipment such as properly fitted and maintained helmets, mouthguards, and goggles; and recognize that education is not enough to change the cultural and physical environment of youth sports, but requires active implementation of sports safety best practices at the grass roots level.

A comprehensive survey by the Korey Stringer Institute of U.S. high schools finds that, while only 60-65% of U.S. high schools have a certified athletic trainer at games and practices on a daily basis, the actual percentage of high school athletes working with an ATC on a daily basis is actually between 85 and 90%. Because insurance premiums are usually much higher for schools without such coverage, for a high school not to have an ATC on staff is penny-wise and pound foolish. According to Executive Director, Douglas Casa, Ph.D., ATC, KSI is also finding from discussions with liability insurers and medical groups that insurance premiums for high schools without ATC coverage are skyrocketing; with the increased premium, in one instance, rising above the annual salary of the ATC, whose position was eliminated due to budget restraints.

In a powerful SmartTeams Talk, the NCAA's Chief Medical Officer discusses two major NCAA-funded research studies on sport-related concussions and its efforts to address mental health issues among college athletes, and sees in the trend toward sports specialization and the overuse injury epidemic clear signs of a broken youth sports system.

The leading expert on sudden death of youth athletes argues that youth sports safety policies need to be developed and implemented by sports medicine professionals, not athletic administrators, and notes that the level of risk of catastrophic sports injury often depends on how a state athletic association responds to the death of athletes in their states.

In an emotional video, the first in a series of SmartTeam talks filmed at MomsTEAM Institute's September 2014 sports safety summit, a California man recalls the 2001 death of his 17-year-old nephew from Second Impact Syndrome during a high school football game and how his search for answers became a game-changer.