A growing emphasis has been placed on ensuring the safety of high school athletes participating in various sports. This includes measures aimed at preventing injuries, providing proper medical care, and implementing emergency response protocols.
Researchers began publishing annual reports and bi-annual updates examining secondary school health and safety policies in each state and Washington, D.C. The assessments are based on safety measures that states can put in place, such as emergency action plans, having automatic external defibrillators on site, training coaches to look for signs of concussion, treating exertional heat stroke, and others.
Beginning in 2017, UConn’s Korey Stringer Institute (KSI), a division of the College of Agriculture, Health, and Natural Resources, began publishing annual reports and bi-annual updates examining secondary school health and safety policies in each state and Washington, D.C.
The assessments are based on safety measures that states can put in place, such as emergency action plans, having automatic external defibrillators on site, training coaches to look for signs of concussion, treating exertional heat stroke, and others. According to the latest findings, 38 states have adopted legislative or state high school athletic association changes that improve student-athlete safety since KSI began this process three years ago.
We meet with key individuals – for instance, the State Athletic Association, sports medicine, advisory committees, superintendents, principals, legislators, anybody that could play a role in either enforcing or implementing the policies for high school sport safety.
Rebecca Stearns
The paper detailing nationwide updates and progress was published this week in the American Journal of Sports Medicine. The report illustrates the progress made since 2017, and it also helps Team Up for Sports Safety (TUFFS) zero in on ways to help decision-makers take steps toward further improvements to safeguard athlete safety.
According to Rebecca Stearns, Assistant Professor, Department of Kinesiology, Chief Operating Officer of the Korey Stringer Institute, and Director of TUFFS, KSI and the TUFFS initiative have a mission to travel state-to-state to meet with policymakers to ensure life-saving policies are adopted nationwide.
“We decided to do a state-based approach and make it really targeted, individualized for the states,” she explains.
Policies take time to implement, but TUFFS works to make the process go more smoothly by meeting with key individuals from each state to identify areas for rapid and significant change. Meetings with representatives from each state are scheduled to present policies and measures tailored to that state that address areas for improvement.
“We meet with key individuals – for instance, the State Athletic Association, sports medicine, advisory committees, superintendents, principals, legislators, anybody that could play a role in either enforcing or implementing the policies for high school sports safety,” says Stearns. “Then we focus on four conditions we call the four H’s; head, heart, heat, and hemoglobin, which translate to cardiac arrest, head injuries, heat stroke, and sickle cell trait. Those four conditions make up 90% of the deaths that we see, so that’s why we target those when we go to the state meetings.”
“We have a policy document that the decision makers can take forth and vote on or put through a legislative route,” Stearns says at the end of the meeting. According to the report, this approach has been successful, with every state that has met with TUFFS seeing significant improvements in implementing life-saving safety measures.
“In the last three years, the top five states were all states that TUFFS visited,” says Stearns. “We’re proud that those are the states with the highest score increases over the last three years.” Furthermore, none of the states ranked in the bottom five have yet to hold a TUFFS meeting. In terms of impact, after working with states, the mean score rises by 10%.”
Stearns explains that while funding issues are frequently the most difficult to overcome when implementing policy changes, they are not the only ones.
“The other major impediment is determining who is ultimately responsible for athlete health and safety.” Is it the responsibility of the state high school association? Is it legislative or statutory?”
Despite these challenges, as well as the sometimes-slow process of policy change, the TUFFS team is encouraged by the report and the fact that momentum is building, but Stearns adds that more work in raising awareness is needed. Many schools across the country remain unprepared or under-prepared to respond effectively in the event of potentially life-threatening complications, despite the fact that millions of students participate in sports each year.
“I think a lot of parents have this underlying assumption and kind of a false sense of security that, if you send your kids to practice, there are guidelines and rules in place that are going to protect them, when we know that that’s definitely not the case. Unfortunately, in the last five years, we’ve seen over 300 sport-related deaths at the high school level alone, so we are just trying to curb that. Parents should be asking things like ‘Do you have an athletic trainer? Do you have an emergency action plan? Where is the nearest AED?’, Because those could all be things that save your child’s life. Bringing attention to it and getting parents in the local community to kind of push for this and support it and start asking questions, I think it goes a long way.”
