The @MomsTeam Summit in Boston #PlaySmart

September 21, 2014 by 1 Comment

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Dr. Brian Hainline, Chief Medical Officer for the NCAA, discussing how to ensure the physical and mental health of youth athletes.

It truly was inspiring being part of a special day of talk and action that took place on Monday.  As I wrap up my work week (condensed into a few busy days after flying back home to Columbus, OH from Boston, MA) I now have the time to reflect a bit on the day.

MomsTeam Institute hosted a summit at Harvard Medical School, “SmartTeams Play Safe™: Protecting the Health & Safety of the Whole Child In Youth Sports By Implementing Best Practices,” and I was honored to be one of the speakers.

I’ve written about MomsTeam, a non-profit organization implementing best practices in youth sport safety, before; but I don’t believe I’ve ever shared with you what a strong band of clinicians and researchers comprise the group.  Monday, many of my fellow speakers formed a veritable ‘Who’s Who’ of sports medicine, and to a person they gave some wonderfully memorable talks:  ranging from Doug Casa speaking broadly about the subject of heat injury prevention in youth sports  to Brian Hainline, the NCAA’s Chief Medical Officer, to Holly Silvers-Granelli who spoke about ACL prevention in female youth athletes, emphasizing neuromuscular training programs (a subject which is central to one of our CJSM podcasts), and Tracey Covassin who spoke about gender differences in concussions.

A particularly poignant moment came when Dr. Hainline had us watch the video from Designed to Move, a “Physical Activity Action Agenda.”   Read more of this post

Filed under General Interest, Psychology in Sport, Public Health in Sports and Exercise Medicine, Youth Sport Tagged with , , , , ,

Beantown & the MomsTeam Summit

September 13, 2014 by 1 Comment

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With the illustrious Brooke de Lench, Executive Director of MomsTeam. Friend and fellow traveller in the quest to make youth sports safer.

I’m flying to Boston today, and it feels like going home.

As I’ve shared with readers of this blog, I spent many of my formative years of education and medical training in ‘Beantown.’  I’ve experienced both sports (university track and cross-country) and sports medicine (fellowship training, coverage of the Boston marathon, and more) in ‘the Hub.’

This morning I head to Boston in advance of attending and speaking at a very special gathering taking place on Monday:  a ‘Youth Sports Summit’ taking place at Harvard Medical School.  The summit will focus on evidence-based best practices to address almost every facet of #YouthSportsSafety:  concussion prevention, sound nutrition, screening for sudden cardiac death, prevention of sexual abuse, to name a few topics.  I am one of several speakers and I’ll be speaking on injury prevention in youth athletes.

The host for the “Smart Teams Play Safe” summit is MomsTEAM  an especially influential organization addressing #YouthSportsSafety concerns. I serve on the Board of Advisors for the non-profit MomsTEAM Institute.  The Board is full of authors who have published in CJSM:  Tracey Covassin, Neeru Jayanthi, Dawn Comstock, Johnana Register-Mihalik……it’s a veritable ‘Who’s Who’ of sports medicine.  Most of the Board will be in attendance, and many will be speaking.

As I prepare for my talk, I find myself so frequently turning to the pages of CJSM to find the evidence for best practices in this area.  I will be relying heavily on studies ranging from the AMSSM position statement on youth overuse injuries, published in January 2014; to the CASEM position statement on neuromuscular training for ACL injury prevention; to some of the compelling research regarding the benefits of postponing body checking in youth hockey.

I’ll be blogging and tweeting from Boston, so look to these pages and to our twitter feed for updates on the proceedings.

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Spoiler Alert (will be mentioning this in my talk):  if there is any group that is going to begin solving the epidemic of youth sports injuries, it is a determined group of mothers like those involved in MomsTeam.  From the Playground Movement of the late 19th century, to the push by MADD to address the public health crisis of drunk driving, motivated mothers have made major impacts on societal health.  I have no doubt that in the arena of #YouthSportsSafety, the same will hold true.

Filed under Ethics and probity in SEM, Evidence-based Medicine in SEM, General Interest, Youth Sport Tagged with

Published On-Line First

August 7, 2014 by

What we once dubbed ‘Published Ahead of Print’ (PAP), we now call ‘Published On-Line First‘ (POLF???). Whatever the phrase or acronym, I can attest to the benefit as an editor, a reader, and an author.  The publication flexibility that publishing on line provides is extraordinary.  We get many excellent manuscripts submitted for consideration.  The few that make it through our rigorous peer review must then wait in the queue to get on the actual pages of the journal; and so, with publishing on line, we can make the authors’ scientific findings available immediately, even before we have copy on paper.  The articles are immediately found on PubMed and are citable with their unique digital object identifier (DOI) number.

As a reader, I enjoy this functionality.  I rarely get my medical information any more from paper.  I still receive CJSM and other journals (Sports Health, JAMA, MSSE, etc.) in the mail.  I might page through them as I eat breakfast; I will have them on my nightstand to skim prior to sleep.  But most of the time, I am reading my medical journals on the laptop or iPad.  Or I’m sharing a link to a study with someone on twitter.  All of this can only be done with an on-line publishing functionality.  It’s brilliant.

Finally, as an author:  it is always exciting to get your manuscript through peer review.  Always exciting to see the months to years of hard work culminate with an accepted manuscript.  Historically, one would then wait for some time before actually seeing the manuscript in print.  Now, once a CJSM author has completed their post-acceptance corrections, reviewed the galley proofs, and so on, their work can be disseminated immediately.  As an example, here is a recent bit of excitement I just had as an author in the pages of CJSM: ‘Reliability of a computerized neurocognitive test in baseline concussion testing of high school athletes.’ 

I am off on vacation, and so I thought I would share a post on PAP from 2013.  More soon!

sportingjim's avatarClinical Journal of Sport Medicine Blog

Time to time, I like to share with readers of this blog some of the features of CJSM with which they may not be familiar.  Our journal’s website has a wealth of resources that I’d encourage you to check out regularly.

For instance, besides publishing the full journal every two months, we frequently disseminate breaking sports medicine research in a more fluid, continuous fashion via our “Published Ahead of Print” (PAP) feature.  PAP allows us to pursue a major goal we editors have:  to contribute to the world of clinical sports medicine in a contemporary fashion, taking advantage of the multi-media offerings of the digital world.   This goal is reflected in this blog itself; in the podcast feature we have just begun; in our engagement with you on social media; and in the journal’s iPad functionality.

“When you want it….where you want it…the way you want it.”  That’s…

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Filed under Concussion in Sport, General Interest, Youth Sport

CJSM Podcast 4: Concussions and the World Cup

July 24, 2014 by

jsm-podcast-bg-1In this podcast we had the chance to talk with physicians Cindy Chang and Matthew Gammons about the concussion incidents in the recent FIFA World Cup.  Drs. Chang and Gammons are distinguished members of one of our affiliated societies, the American Medical Society for Sports Medicine:  Dr. Chang is a past president and Dr. Gammons is a current vice-president of the organization.

Our Concussion Collection on our main web page contains several valuable research studies on the subject of concussion, and several of the articles are free.  The collection also includes the important Zurich Consensus Guidelines from 2012, which is one of the subjects up for discussion in the podcast.

At CJSM, we employ various media to ‘spread the word.’  You can get a quick taste of what the Zurich guidelines are about by watching our video of past Editor-in-Chief Willem Meeuwisse.  And all of our podcasts can be found here.

Enjoy this, our fourth one,  and let us know what you think!

Filed under CJSM Podcasts, Concussion in Sport, Elite sport, General Interest, Youth Sport Tagged with , , ,

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