Live from Australia–Coming Soon!

February 9, 2016 by 1 Comment

acsp prep

Getting my gear ready for the ACSP 2016 Conference

I’m busily preparing for my journey to Surfer’s Paradise, Queensland, Australia, where the Australasian College of Sports Physicians (ACSP) will have its Annual Scientific Conference 12 February – 16 February.  I’ve been anticipating this conference for some time, in large part for the unique opportunity it presents to connect face-to-face with valued members of one of our affiliated societies, the ACSP.

The Australian and New Zealand sport medicine communities typically punch well above their weight, making a profound impact on the international scene.  Witness one of our more recent–and already well-read, studies, published ‘on-line first’:  the ACSP Position Statement on Mesenchymal Stem/Stromal Cell Therapies in Sport and Exercise Medicine.   The lead author of this paper is Hamish Osborne of the University of Otago; Dr. Osborne is also one of the CJSM Associate Editors, and so I get to catch up with him a couple of times a year via phone conferencing….and if I’m lucky, I see him for an Editorial Board dinner once every couple of years (last time was in Quebec, at the Canadian Academy of Sport and Exercise Medicine (CASEM) meeting held jointly with FIMS).  Dr. Osborne and I already have planned to sit down and record a podcast focused on the stem cell paper, and so look for that to come out in early March — a few short weeks from now!

Also recently published on line first on the CJSM web site is an article on DHEA treatment of female athletes with adrenal insufficiency by Australian David Handelsman and New Zealand’s eminent David Gerrard–I’m hoping to see these gentleman in Surfer’s Paradise!

Dr. Osborne, I see,  is on the panel of speakers for the ACSP conference, as are a host of other great speakers.  I see Roald Bahr, Jill Cook and past president of the ACSM Steven Blair all on the lineup.  I look forward to their talks.  And I look forward to our Editor-in-chief, Chris Hughes, delivering a web broadcast from across the globe on “How to get Published,” a session he will reprise live on a visit to the USA to attend the American Medical Society of Sports Medicine (AMSSM) annual conference in April.  As some of you may know, Dr. Hughes is very busy these days with both his Editorial work and his head team physician work for Chelsea F.C.  It’s hard for him to disengage in the middle of the season–so he’s staying back in London while delivering his web talk while I….well, let’s just say when I’m not speaking or engaged in the conference, I’ll be enjoying the beer, sun and surf of Australia for him.  Cheers Chris!

My talk will be focused on youth sport, with an American perspective.  I plan to post that talk on this blog post after I have given it, and I will most certainly be blogging and tweeting from Down Under.  See you back here on these pages, and on social media, soon–now I’m off to my 18+ hour flight.

 

Filed under Youth Sport Tagged with ,

PRiSM — An Acronym to Know

January 30, 2016 by

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Drs. Min Kocher (L) Boston Children’s Hospital & Hank Chambers (R) Rady Children’s Hospital

I’m just wrapping up a productive, educational, and enjoyable few days in San Diego, where I attended the 3rd Annual Meeting of the Pediatric Research in Sports Medicine (PRISM).unnamed

Don’t know that acronym?  I suspect you’ll be hearing it more frequently over the next several years.

The brainchild of Hank Chambers, pediatric orthopedic surgeon at Rady Children’s Hospital, San Diego, PRISM aspires to join the forces of several stakeholders and raise the bar in terms of research in pediatric sports medicine.  It brings together primary care sports medicine physicians, orthopaedic surgeons, athletic trainers, physical therapists and musculoskeletal radiolgists.

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Things got heated up between some of the presenters at PRISM: ‘in the ring’ were Drs. d’Hemecourt (L) and Minor (R)–debating the relative merits of bracing in spondylolysis

Dr. Chambers just turned over the president’s reins to Mininder Kocher, a pediatric orthopedic surgeon at Boston Children’s Hospital.  Dr. Kocher must have called in the chips on the folks he knows from Boston Children’s, as a great number of the speakers at PRISM have had (past/present) some affiliation with that institution.  A short list of these presenters, all of whom have been authors at some time in the pages of CJSM, include:  Andrea Stracciolini, Lyle Micheli, Pierre d’Hemecourt, Kate Ackerman, Anthony Luke and Dai Sugimoto.  And Benton Heyworth presided over all as the head of the programming committee.

It was a pleasure seeing these folks, as they are like family (I trained at Boston Children’s too).  And it was great seeing other friends as well, like Andrew Gregory (Nashville), Greg Canty (Kansas City) and Greg Myer (Cincinnati).  But it was a special pleasure, and a unique feature of these sorts of meetings, to make the acquaintance of folks whose names I have heard on several different occasions but had heretofore never met.  Christina Master of Children’s Hospital, Philadelphia for instance.  She gave a great talk on clinical tools in the evaluation of pediatric sports related concussions and was tweeting up a storm during the entire conference.

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Greg Myer of Cincinnati Children’s, fielding questions after his talk on return to play post ACL reconstruction.

I found it particularly inspiring to hear the updates from orthopedic colleagues on multi-center trials looking at important injuries in the pediatric athlete:  ranging from knee OCD (the ‘ROCK’ study) to ACL reconstructions (the ‘PLUTO’ study)–I am really looking forward to the results coming from these studies, as they are sure to affect the clinical management of so many patients I serve in the future.

Finally, there was San Diego–a bit of sun and warmth in the middle of winter!  I swam in an outdoor pool three days in a row–I haven’t enjoyed that pleasure in four months.

I lacked for nothing here at PRISM–I gained in knowledge, friendship, and Vitamin D.  Who could ask for more?  I’ve already got the meeting in 2017 (to take place in Dallas) on my calendar–I hope to see you there too!

 

Filed under General Interest, Medical Conferences, Youth Sport Tagged with ,

Time Flies

December 16, 2015 by

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This man would love Surfer’s Paradise, Queensland, Australia: Site of ACSP February 2016

Is Christmas really almost here?

Have my high school football players really finished their seasons, and now wrestlers and basketball players are taking their places in my clinics?

Two months ago I was posting from the South African Sports Medicine Association’s meeting in Johannesburg (SASMA2015), and it feels like yesterday.

And that means that two months from now is…..tomorrow?

Two months from now I might be…..surfing???

I am excited that early in 2016 [in precisely two months] I will have the chance to attend the Australasian College of Sports Physicians (ACSP) annual meeting in Surfer’s Paradise.  I am honored to speak on the topic of youth sports, and will join colleagues such as Roald Bahr, Steven Blair, and more from 12 February to 16 February on the ‘Gold Coast’ of Queensland.

This is a special opportunity to join up with a special group of sports medicine clinicians. ACSP is one of CJSM’s affiliated societies.  With most of our Editorial Board in North America and the UK, we typically have an easier time visiting our other affiliated societies such as the Canadian Academy of Sport and Exercise Medicine (CASEM) and the American Medical Society for Sports Medicine (AMSSM).

So, in 2016, we’ll have at least two of our Editorial Board on site at ACSP, as I will join Hamish Osborne.  Last year, Dr. Osborne–our Dunedin, New Zealand-based Associate Editor– filed a couple of posts live from 2015 ACSP. This year, I’ll share the duties with him!

The Australians and the Kiwis punch above their weight in the worlds of sports and sport medicine.  I think that statement must come as no surprise to readers of this blog.  I’ve had the opportunity on several occasions to write about important contributions the folks Down Under are making in the sports medicine research world.  If you haven’t previously had the chance, listen to our podcast conversation with Alex Donaldson on ‘Footy First,’ an injury prevention intervention for Aussie Rules football. Or read the recent guest post authored by Sheree Bekker of The Australian Centre for Research into Injury in Sport and its Prevention (ACRISP).

So…..two months.  That will fly by!!!  I won’t have any chance to practice any surfing in landlocked Ohio, but I’ll soon enough have to get cracking on developing that talk!

Filed under General Interest, Youth Sport Tagged with , , , ,

5 Questions with Brooke de Lench, MomsTEAM Institute of Youth Sports Safety

November 23, 2015 by

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I am pleased to have as our guest today Ms. Brooke de Lench, a pioneer and leader in the field of youth sports safety.  Brooke is founder and Executive Director of  MomsTEAM Institute of Youth Sports Safety, Producer of the PBS movie ‘The Smartest Team: Making High School Football Safer,” and author of Home Team Advantage:  The Critical Role of Mothers in Youth Sports.

Brooke has become a valued colleague, and someone I think of immediately when I’m asked what relevance social media has for a sports medicine clinician. I first ‘met’ Brooke on Twitter, and as our relationship has evolved, I now find I work with her on a weekly if not sometimes daily basis, addressing youth sports issues of mutual concern.  I am proud that I have become a member of the Board of Directors for the non-profit MomsTEAM Institute, a professional role I have written about in previous blog posts.

Much of the work MomsTEAM has done has been instrumental in advancing the cause of identifying, preventing, and managing concussions in youth sports, and there is a natural affiliation that has developed between this journal and MomsTEAM over the years, with the Institute authoring several blog posts on the research in youth concussions.  Those posts have frequently looked at work that CJSM has published.  Our November 2015 issue has, for instance, two pieces of original research that I suspect may end up in the pages of a MomsTEAM post: Register-Mihalik’s ‘Characteristics of Pediatric and Adolescent Concussion Clinic Patients with Post-concussion Amnesia,’ and  Schmidt’s ‘Does Visual Performance Influence Head Impact Severity Among High School Football Athletes?’

With MomsTEAM gearing up for a collaboration with Sony Pictures‘ Concussion (the movie)–an event that I think will impact all clinicians caring for youth athletes–I thought it was time to interview Brooke on our regularly recurring “Five Questions with CJSM” feature.

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1) CJSM: How old is MomsTeam Institute and how did you found it?

BD: I established MomsTEAM Institute in 1999 and we launched our first website and workshops in August of 2000. I began writing the “Survival Guide for Youth Sports Parents” in 1998 when Random House offered to publish my book in three volumes over the subsequent five years because I had “so much information.” Instead, I turned to the limitless container of information – the new and emerging internet which was something much more exciting to me. Later in 2006, I did write a book that Harper Collins published.

In 2000, there was nowhere to find independent, objective well researched and well written information for sports parents, and so I brought together a team of experts in medicine, law, journalism, sports, and coaching who along with me as a writer-researcher, began the long journey of providing the very best information on how to keep student athletes safe:  physically, emotionally, psychologically and sexually.

Parents always seemed to turn to me with sports safety questions; my triplet sons called these regulars “Moms Team.” Hence the name. Read more of this post

Filed under Injury Prevention, Safeguarding in Sport, Youth Sport Tagged with , , , ,

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