5 November 2024 – Leading sports injury charity, Podium Analytics, has called on the Government to end the 20-year wait for the establishment of a National Sports Injury Database.
A Safety in Sport Perception Survey, published by Podium in conjunction with YouGov, has found overwhelming support for urgent reform – with 73% of respondents believing that the NHS should record whether a head injury that receives medical attention was sustained during sport.
At present, hospitals and GP surgeries have no way of automatically including this information in their recorded data. As a result, there is no record of how many head injuries are sustained through sport; how those injuries occur; which sports produce more injuries; and which demographic groups are impacted. Such data could be used to inform policy around grassroot sports, to better safeguard participants and ensure more people play more sport for longer.
Calls for a National Sports Injury Database stretch back to 2002, when Professor Dr Nick Webborn CBE, a leading sports medicine specialist, recommended to a Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Working Group that such a UK-wide body be set up to “improve the standards of safety and medical provision for participants in organised sport”.
The issue was highlighted again in a ‘Duty of Care in Sport’ report by Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson DBE, in 2015 and further referenced in a 2021 DCMS Select Committee Inquiry into Concussion in Sport.
Andy Hunt, CEO of Podium Analytics, said: “More than two decades have now passed since a National Sports Injury Database was first proposed. Lack of action at governmental level has resulted in a generation of lost data. This is an open goal to reduce risk and increase participation in sport – and successive governments have missed it. We hope the new Government will act now to make sport safer for future generations and we look forward to supporting them in this cause."
As well as the more accurate recording of injuries, Podium also wants to explore the feasibility of using machine learning to extract sports injury data from existing NHS medical records, where written notes recording the sporting nature of injuries are not automatically included in data.
Podium’s survey also found support for more widespread first-aid training, with 84% of respondents believing that youth sports coaches should hold a first-aid qualification. A desktop study by Podium in September found that only 40% of 167 UK National Governing Bodies (NGBs) mandate first-aid training for grassroots coaches.
“NGBs have a level of responsibility to implement a basic level of training that could lead to significant improvements in safety, public trust and overall health outcomes in sports participation,” added Hunt.
Podium also found widespread backing for mental health training among grassroots sports coaches. 72% of respondents said that youth coaches should be trained to raise awareness of the mental benefits of sport, while 68% said coaches should be trained to support youth mental health.
Download the full 2024 Safety in Sport Perception Survey
