Disseminating effective injury prevention exercise programs across sporting environments is a way of preventing injuries and ensuring safe and sustainable sport participation. After all, evidence on preventvie effectiveness is only useful when it is also employed by the end-users in a practical setting. Unfortunately, this shift from science to practice is still not efficiently made. Therefore, the aim of this study was to explore community-Australian Football coaches’ perspectives on the strategies they believed would enhance the dissemination and scale-up of prevention exercise programs.
In a qualitative multiple case study design, semi-structured interviews with coaches in Victoria, Australia, were conducted. Overall, coaches believed a range of strategies were important including:
- coach education
- policy drivers
- overcoming potential problem areas
- a ‘try before you buy approach’
- presenting empirical evidence
- guidelines for injury-prevention exercise programs (IPEPs)
- forming strategic collaboration and working in partnership
- communication and social marketing
- public meetings
- development of a coach hotline
- targeted multi-focused approaches
These findings can support the creation of communication and implementation strategies that will enhance the dissemination and scale-up of effective strategies across community sport environments.
Nonetheless, a shift to a culture whereby evidence-based injury-prevention will become common practice in community sports will take time, and persistent commitment by all involved in the sport is important. As such, research needs to continue to develop and identify effective and practical, holistic and multi-level interventions to support coaches in preventing injuries.
The full article can be found here (open access)
McGlashan A, Verrinder G, Verhagen E. Working towards More Effective Implementation, Dissemination and Scale-Up of Lower-Limb Injury-Prevention Programs: Insights from Community Australian Football Coaches. Int J Environ Res Public Health 2018;15:351.