Regular readers of the Injury Prevention blog will be well aware with my obsession with engagement. Traditionally, injury prevention – such as in road safety – focuses on the “Three E’s” of Engineering, Enforcement, and Education. I think that Engagement is the fourth, often-forgotten, essential “E”, albeit it can be very tricky to actually manage, and manage effectively.

I was interested to read the engagement experiences of a team of Australian colleagues who trialled an online injury surveillance program in 78 community sports clubs in five football leagues (see http://www.injepijournal.com/content/1/1/19). I have previously blogged regarding injuries in sports such as football, and in particular related to concussion, and this and similar contact sports continue to be of interest to injury prevention researchers, practitioners, and policy-makers. As such, community-based injury surveillance can help everyone from persons in injury prevention to those actually on the sports field. While Ekegren et al note that 44% of the 78 clubs targeted for the intervention actually adopted the program, overall only 23% of the clubs implemented the program by recording injuries in the online program in 2012, and 9% maintained the program by recording injuries in 2013.

Barriers included personal factors like a lack of importance being placed on injury surveillance; socio-contextual factors such as staff shortages/changes, injury underreporting, lack of leadership/support for reporting injuries; and system factors included technical issues, data requirements, time to input data, and adjusting to a new online reporting system. Notwithstanding these barriers, facilitators include recognition that injury surveillance is important and is part of the trainer’s role (personal factors); association with a simultaneous injury prevention program (socio-contextual factors); and ease of use (system factors).

Engagement to reduce barriers and maximise benefits appears essential, and expertise and guidance in engagement appears to be a definite need in the realm of injury prevention across all domains of injury. In my own area of young driver road safety, I and others struggle to engage one key partner: parents. Perhaps learnings from one domain can help other domains, and information sharing is vital.