Edouard et al. Educating and promoting athletes’ health protection through infographics on injury and illness prevention during an international competition: a prospective study during the 2024 European Athletics Championships: BMJ Open Sport & Exercise Medicine 2024;10:e002162.
The full article can be found here
Tell us more about yourself and the author team.
I am Pascal Edouard. I’m a sports medicine physician at the University Hospital of Saint-Etienne and a University Professor in Physiology focusing on sports medicine at the University Jean Monnet Saint-Etienne in France. I’m passionate about athletics! So, I focus my clinical activities on managing athletes, my research activities on better understanding injuries and reducing injury risk in athletics, and my teaching activities on disseminating all these experiences to improve clinical practice and in turn, athletes’ health protection and injury prevention.
I like collaborative work! A study, a manuscript, is for me, first, a human story.
Communication, exchanges, discussions—all these improve the project. Each member of the team’s competencies, expertise, and experiences can benefit the overall project, and this also allows us to improve ourselves.
The authors’ team is composed of colleagues who are more than colleagues. With whom the story is not only about the study and the manuscript but also continues in our lives, working with them is highly enthusiastic and a great pleasure! We have been working together for a long time, and recently, new colleagues have joined the group.
During the data collection period in Roma, we were, of course, very focused on the study, but we also had the chance to discuss other aspects of life and share very nice moments together.
What is the story behind your study?
Since 2009, European Athletics (https://www.european-athletics.com/home) has collected injury and illness data during European Athletics Indoor and Outdoor Championships. Since 2013, a pre-participation health questionnaire at the start of championships has been implemented to better understand athletes at risk of new injury or illness during the championships. This has allowed us to improve our knowledge of injuries and illnesses and their potential risk factors during international athletics championships. It is consequently now fundamental to disseminate this knowledge to the community!
Since 2016, every two years during the Outdoor European Athletics Championships, European Athletics has organised a medical seminar for medical teams participating at the championship to disseminate the knowledge. Additionally, webinars took place for health professionals and coaches to inform them about the injuries and illnesses in athletics. Recently, an Athletics Medicine Certificate has been developed (https://www.univ-st-etienne.fr/fr/formation/certifications-9/certifications-9/athletics-medicine-certificate-L523XCXM.html) for physicians with the overall goal to improve clinical practice and subsequently athletes’ health protection and injury prevention.
However, this is not enough! There is a need to continue and better disseminate the information and new knowledge to the end-users, the actors in the field, with again the overall goal of improving athletes’ health protection and injury prevention. Therefore, we conducted the present study.
In your own words, what did you find?
In this study, we disseminated infographics created based on previous studies on injury and illness during European championships, covering three domains: 1) the primary injuries and illnesses occurring before and during international athletics championships, 2) the primary injury and illness risk factors, and 3) practical proposals for injury and illness prevention. The infographics were disseminated through emails to teams and displayed on the championship venues. Then, we asked athletes if they viewed the infographics and found them helpful, and we compared this information with injury and illness data routinely collected during the championships. We found that about one-third of athletes who participated in the study viewed the infographics, and that those who saw them as applicable were associated with lower injury risk.
What was the main challenge you faced in your study?
The main challenge was the athletes’ participation. We had the experience of several injury and illness surveillance studies during the European championships, including athletes’ self-reported data collection. We thus planned the present survey, knowing this enormous challenge, and did our best to overcome it. We considered the mistakes and weaknesses of previous studies and their learning in addition to the successful actions. However, the athletes’ participation was not as high as expected. We will thus continue to reflect on this by including the actors on the field in the loop!
If there is one take-home message from your study, what would that be?
The key message is that promoting the health protection of athletes through infographics on injury and illness prevention in the context of international athletics championships was feasible and may represent an additional prevention approach.