Safe In Physical Activities And Sports; Intervention Mapping For The Development Of An Acceptable Sports Injury Prevention Program

PURPOSE To establish what the ‘best possible intervention strategy’ is to be implemented in physical education (PE) classes in secondary schools, aimed at preventing acute lower extremity injuries sustained during school and leisure-time sports activities in school children 12 to 15 years of age? METHODS The intervention was developed according to the Intervention Mapping (IM) protocol. IM enables health educators to create feasible and effective health promotion programs, and can also be utilized for the development of a sports injury prevention program. IM involves a systematic process that explicates a series of five steps for the development of health promotion programs based on theory, empirical evidence and additional qualitative research. An additional ‘practical’ component was added by involving PE teachers and children, the end users of the intervention, in the protocol. RESULTS Multiple potential risk factors for a sports injury implied that the intervention should be targeted at children, physical education teachers, and parents. In order to achieve a general reduction of lower extremity sports injuries in children, several ‘sub-objectives’ should be met. Based on scientific evidence of risk factors and mechanism for injuries in children aged 12–15 years programme objectives and performance objectives that would theoretically lead to a decline in sports injuries in this age group were formed. This resulted in an intended intervention program from a theoretical perspective that was presented to a representative panel of twenty PE teachers in 3 focus-groups. PE teachers were asked to give feedback on this theoretical intervention and were specifically asked for practical information on their wishes and possibilities regarding such a preventive program. Based on this feedback a program that was generally accepted by PE teachers and useable within in their PE classes was developed. A draft version of this ‘final’ program was then presented to 300 children of the projected age group. As the PE teachers, children were asked what they sought for in such a prevention program and, additionally, what it should look like. From this information the final intervention program that was generally accepted and useable for children as well as PE teachers was developed. CONCLUSIONS Although this method has never been used before in the development of an intervention against sports injuries, the underlying systematic ‘evidence based’ process and the contribution of the field of practice makes the IM method superior to other methods for developing a working and accepted injury prevention program.