PROJECT PARTNERS
Reade Rehabilitation Center
Oslo Sports Trauma Research Center
Inholland University of Applied Sciences
VU Amsterdam
DeSportartsengroep
Leiden University
Royal Dutch Lawn and Tennis Assocation
Dutch Triathlon Association
Royal Dutch Hockey Association
Royal Dutch Soccer Association
FUNDING
The Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development
BACKGROUND
Sports participation and a physically active lifestyle have been advocated for its health and social benefits and increased quality of life, both in able-bodied individuals and those with physical disabilities. Although sports participation lags behind in the latter group, it has increased over the past years.
Sports injuries do pose problems for all athletes and impact society, but often go hand-in-hand with additional problems in individuals with a disability as injuries can impose upon an already restricted lifestyle. With the relevance of studies on injury surveillance and epidemiology for preventive efforts widely acknowledged, there is a limited number of these studies in disability sports.
Injury prevention is relevant to enable long-time sports participation and continuation of activities of daily living. This may be even more important for athletes with a physical disability. The variability in disabilities, and their relationship with each individual athlete’s ability to participate in sports and injury risk, highlights the need for tailored preventive approaches. Such individual approaches are upcoming, enabled by current technologies for the prospective and continuous online monitoring of health and performance related measures in individuals.
Our previous research has shown the ability to automatically provide online preventive advice to individual able-bodied runners tailored to their reported health status (monitored over time using the OSTRC-questionnaire on health problems), and the effectiveness of this systematic approach to increase prevention adherence and prevent injuries. This approach is applicable to disabled athletes and fits the challenges prevention faces in these athletes. Given the specific injury risk and health problems in athletes with a disability, this approach needs first to be adapted to make it valid and feasible for this specific population.
OBJECTIVES
This study will:
(1) adapt the systematic preventive approach to disability sports;
(2) implement and evaluate the online tailored approach aimed to increase preventive behaviours and reduce acute and overuse injuries in disability sports; and
(3) evaluate end-users’ perspectives on the intervention.
