Implementation of an effective ankle injury prevention program through either an interactive App or a Booklet, showed similar outcomes on the short and the long run. Not only did both methods result in comparable compliance rates during the 8 weeks of the program, both methods also led to comparable ankle sprain recurrence rates and costs after one year of follow-up. Both the App and the Booklet can be used successfully and with the same cost efficiency. Apps are, as such, not necessarily always better.
Our latest study provides knowledge on the magnitude, severity, and nature of injuries experienced by elite field-hockey players. While injuries may hamper players’ performance and availability for training and competing, prevention is essential in field-hockey, and the use of protective equipment has been encouraged in previous studies. The use of protective equipment is important for injury prevention. However, the present study shows that non- contact injuries, that may not be preventable with protective gear, are also a burden on field hockey players' health. In sports, these injuries may be prevented with structured exercise, and load management. Therefore, the investigation of such strategies is encouraged in elite field-hockey.
Last Monday - May 7th 2018 - Evert Verhagen held his inaugural lecture entitled "Citius, Altius, Fortius: About the future of Sports, Physical Activity & Health". Through this lecture he accepted his university chair as a professor on 'Physical Activity, Sports, and Health'. We now make the transcript of his lecture available. Both the Dutch (original) version and English version (translated; pardon the typo's) can be downloaded in pdf format. Also the slides of his lecture (unfortunately only in Dutch) are up for grabs. We are sure Evert is keen on answering any of your questions in relation to his lecture, so do not hesitate to drop him a line if you wish.
Last Monday (7th of May) we organised the symposium "From the Playgrounds to the Olympics". The program combined the latest research and practice on physcial activity promotion with the state-of-the-art in regards to sports performance and athlete health protection. A wooping line-up of established and emerging researchers combined their scientific insights with knowledge for practice. Certainly a motivational and inspirational day. For those of you who could not join, we have recorded the entire day.
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.
The Head in the Game study investigates the impact of contact sports participation on neurocognitive function. For our investigation in the Netherlands we are currently looking for female participants aged 30+.
To overcome the problem of complexity, many scientists simplify or reduce this complexity by disassembling the complex system into their single units. Without argue, reductionism has been the basis of most scientific fields. However, an athlete is a complex system with non-linear relationships between biomechanical, behavioural, physiological, and psychological factors. It is the interaction between these individual components that give rise to the collective behaviour of the active and rehabilitating athlete, and as such determines succes of our efforts.
It has been a bit quiet lately, but we have not been laying back. Just released in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, our cost-effectiveness analysis that compares a mobile App versus a paper-based injury prevention program.
Hidde P. van der Ploeg and Melvyn Hillsdon recently published a paper in the International Journal of Bahavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity that summarizes both the arguments in favour and against the general statement of the debate: “Is sedentary behaviour just physical inactivity by another name?”
Annika Prien, who is a visiting PhD in our group, just published this important review on the incidence of concussions and other head injuries in elite level football, rugby, ice hockey and American Football. Although injuries to the head represent a small proportion of all sport injuries, they are of great concern due to their potential long-term consequences, which are even suspected in mild traumatic brain injuries. She concluded that future research should focus on concussion in women’s contact sports, as there is little evidence available in this area.
We doen momenteel onderzoek naar de behandeling van Achillespees klachten bij hardlopers door middel van een randomized controlled trial. Hierbij vergelijken we de werkzaamheid van twee verschillende therapieën. Voor dit onderzoek zijn we op zoek naar participanten: recreatieve hardlopers met klachten aan de Achillespees.
Have you ever wondered why some patients do not adhere to drug prescrip- tions despite warnings regarding the health consequences of non-adherence? The simple reason is that it takes more than just a prescription and education to get patients to take their drugs. A similar scenario has become apparent in the field of sport injury prevention. This editorial provides a framework to raise the bar for sport injury prevention adherence research.
On Monday May 7th, I will hold my inaugural lecture to accept my professorship on ‘Epidemiology of Physical Activity, Sports & Health’ at the VU University of Amsterdam.
My journey up to now has been a team effort to create safe sports for everyone. In honour of all who has contributed to this achievement, I would like to invite you to join our symposium on this festive day.
Please join us on this - free ion charge - day to learn about our journey from physical activity promotion to protecting the health of our Olympic heroes.
2017 was a great for the team in terms of publications. We have been involved in 59 peer reviewed publications that saw the day of light last year; 34 on the topic 'sports & health', and 25 on the topic of 'physical activity & health'. We have started 2018 with flying inspiration, so we hope to reach out with great work in the coming months again.
We are proud to have been involved in this one. The age-specific warm-up program “11+ Kids” has been tested regarding its potential to reduce football (soccer) injuries in children. In total, 243 teams with around 3900 young football players from Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany, and Czech Republic took part in this study. Together with our International colleagues we found considerable protective benefits against injuries.
After a successful symposium with over 150 participants in 2017, the second implementation conference will take place at Friday February 9, 2018 in Amsterdam. Its themed: Improving implementation practice: a one-day implementation science conference.
Also in research collaborations provide opportunities greater than the sum of its parts. We have been lucky enough to collaborate extensively in the recently granted project "Citius, Altius, Sanius". In this new, wide-ranging research project, universities, businesses and sports organisations are set to join forces in an effort to reduce this large number of sports injuries with the help of technology.
Our latest publication involves the determination in the change of knowledge of coaches and players about the Safe Six injury prevention programme in South African Rugby. We hoped that the knowledge would increase following a ‘targeted marketing approach’ that drew attention to the programme.
We are honoured and proud to let you know that the VU University Amsterdam has awarded our own Evert Verhagen a VU University Research Chair, by which he will be appointed as Professor of Epidemiology of Sports, Physical Activity and Health per January 1st 2018. The VU University Research Chair is a selective and privileged appointment as full professor. The chair has been created to recognize and reward outstanding scholars currently at the rank equivalent to associate professor who are acknowledged by their peers as upcoming leaders in their research field.
As the detrimental health effects of sedentary behaviour are well established, insight into the individual and environmental factors that influence adults’ sedentary behaviour is needed. Most studies to date rely on self-reported measures of sedentary time. Therefore, the aim of our most recently published study was to examine the individual and environmental correlates of objectively measured sedentary time in Dutch and Belgian adults.
Athletes can only perform at their best level when in full health. The library of evidence on this notion has increased considerably over the past decade and health monitoring of health athletes has gained a lot of ground recently. With contemporary technologies and methodologies we are now able to monitor athlete's health continuously, by which we are better equipped to protect their health and aid athletes to gain their performance goals. We wondered though, what are the acceptability and the perceptions of athletes and staff members (ie, end-users) towards such online sports-health surveillance systems. In our latest paper we sought an answer to this question.
Vincent Gouttebarge, one of our ACHSS colleagues, is an expert on Common Mental Disorders (CMD) in current and former high level athletes. This recent study, which he led, aimed to determine the prevalence and comorbidity of symptoms of common mental disorders among current and former Dutch elite athletes, and to explore the inference between potential risk indicators and the outcomes measures under investigation.
The physical neighbourhood environment may influence adults’ sedentary behaviour. Yet, most studies examining the association between the physical neighbourhood environment and sedentary behaviour rely on self-reported data of either the physical neighbourhood environment and/or sedentary behaviour. The aim of our most recent study was to investigate the associations between objectively measured physical environmental neighbourhood factors and accelerometer-determined total sedentary time in adults.
Fresh out of this year's International Ankle Symposium, hosted by the Department of Exercise and Sport Science at UNC Chapel Hill, we are pleased to announce that the 8th edition will be held in Amsterdam. The year 2019 seems far away, but we have already started preparations to make you feel welcome.
Awareness of the prevalence of symptoms of common mental disorders (CMD) should be improved in international rugby, and an interdisciplinary approach including psychological attention should be fostered in the medical care of professional rugby players. This is the main conclusion of a recent study to which we contributed.
Hot from the press and just published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine (online first), is our latest manuscript on prevention of running related injuries (RRIs) in Dutch trail-runners. This study evaluated the effectiveness of adding online tailored advice (TrailS6) to general advice on (1) the prevention of RRIs and (2) the determinants and actual preventive behaviour in Dutch trail runners.
Head injuries are common in skiing and snowboarding with possible serious consequences, including long-term and serious disabilities, and death. Despite this knowledge and recommendations to wear a helmet, actual helmet use remains low. We developed and evaluated the effects of a nationwide campaign that focused on behavioural change as a key factor for its success to increase helmet use in Dutch skiers and snowboarders.
Science is not about hard facts. At the core of proper research methods is a series of choices and assumptions made by researchers. Each of those choices impact the value of the study’s results, and as a reader you are presented with the researchers’ interpretations of those results. Shockingly, many readers still take study results for granted and fail to judge and criticise the value of presented outcomes within their own practical context. The BJSM now launches a series of editorials that aim to educate the clinical reader with the tools to form their own balanced opinions about study results.
Sports Medicine Resident Guus Reurink (Academic Center for Evidence Based Medicine AMC and OLVG) was awarded with a second place British Journal of Sports Medicine (BJSM) Award.
On September 19th Ingrid Vriend will defend her PhD thesis entitled "Preventing sport injuries. From evidence to practice". The full PhD thesis can be downloaded as a pdf here soon, in the meantime you may have a look at the extensive summary below to get an idea of her work on translating injury prevention evidence to practice.