All Articles by Lindsey Barton Straus, JD

Ever wonder if media exposure can have a positive effect on sports safety? One has to look no further than to what happened after the deaths of two celebrities in skiing accidents in Europe and North America during the winter of 2008-9, the first, a German politician, wearing a ski helmet, who suffered a traumatic brain injury but survived a collision with a helmet-less mother of four on a ski slope in Austria on New Year's Day 2009 in which the woman died; the second, involving actress Natasha Richardson, who died after a traumatic head injury while skiing without a helmet on a beginner's slope in Quebec in March 2009.

Static stretching neither prevented or induced injury when compared to not stretching before running, according to the results of a first-of-its-kind large scale randomized study presented at the 2011 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons in San Diego.

New research suggests that more intense training and inadequate diet are placing high school athletes at significant risk for developing stress fractures in the bones of the back, hip, leg and foot, with girls more likely to suffer such overuse injury and at an earlier age than boys.

A test for disturbed eye movements has the potential to provide rapid and accurate sideline screening for concussion on the sports sideline, says a new study in the journal Neurology. The King-Devick (K-D) test measuring the speed of rapid number naming is an accurate and reliable method for identifying athletes who should be removed from a game or practice for further evaluation, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania found.

The conclusion that chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is caused by concussions and repetitive subconcussive brain trauma is scientifically premature, say an increasing number of researchers.

In June 2011, USA Hockey approved a rule banning body checking in youth hockey until the Bantam level (13-14 year olds) first proposed at the organization's winter meeting January 22-23) in Colorado Springs, Colorado..

Concussion in high school sports are increasing at a 15% annual rate, finds a new study. Consistent with previous studies, football accounted for more than half of all concussions and a concussion rate nearly double the rate for girls' soccer, the sport with the next highest rate. Concussion rates increased across all 12 sports studied.  Although the degree of change varied, ranging from an average annual increase of 8% for football to 27% for wrestling, Girls had a higher rate of concussion that that of boys in those sports (soccer, basketball, baseball/softball) where the boys' and girls' games are essentially the same.

Little League International has placed a moratorium on the use of composite bats in the Little League (Majors) Division and all other baseball divisions of Little League, effective immediately. 

Conventional wisdom suggests that the less children exercise the more at risk they are at risk of obesity, but a new study finds that the most overweight and obese children are actually members of ethnic groups that are some of the most active.

Youth baseball pitchers throwing more than 100 innings in a calendar year are 3.5 times more likely to be so seriously injured as to require elbow or shoulder surgery or retirement due to injury, says a new study from the American Sports Medicine Institute. The study suggests that playing catcher may double or triple a pitcher's risk of injury, but the small number of injured players studied prevented a finding that the risk was significantly significant.