RugbySmart: Challenges and Lessons from the Implementation of a Nationwide Sports Injury Prevention Partnership Programm
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COMMENTARY
RugbySmart: Challenges and Lessons from the Implementation of a Nationwide Sports Injury Prevention Partnership Programme Kenneth Quarrie1 · Simon Gianotti2 · Ian Murphy1 · Peter Harold1 · Danielle Salmon1 · Joseph Harawira1
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019
1 Introduction In New Zealand, rugby is the cause of the greatest number and cost of sports injuries for people aged 5–40 years. Since 2000, New Zealand Rugby and the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) have partnered to develop and deliver a nationwide rugby-specific injury prevention programme, ‘RugbySmart’, which is a platform for the delivery of injury prevention messages. RugbySmart has focussed on primary and secondary prevention—preventing injuries from occurring, and minimising the severity of those injuries that do occur [1].
2 Programme Structure, Elements and Process RugbySmart draws upon published risk management principles as they apply to sports [2, 3]. The similarity of the process for the development and delivery of programme content for RugbySmart (Fig. 1) with the ‘sequence of prevention’ [4–6] (also called the ‘public health approach’ [7] to injury prevention) is no coincidence. Although complex causal paths for sports injuries mean that predicting injuries on an individual basis is currently unrealistic [8], regularities between proximal causes and injury outcomes in rugby are sufficient to warrant injury prevention interventions at a population level. From 2001 to 2016, the primary output of RugbySmart was the delivery of a compulsory session to coaches and referees. The educational component of RugbySmart has been based on: This article is part of the Topical Collection on Rugby Health. * Kenneth Quarrie [email protected] 1
New Zealand Rugby, Wellington, New Zealand
ACC, Wellington, New Zealand
2
• instructing coaches how to teach players to be as safe as
possible in the contact elements of rugby, and, for referees, how to apply the laws to minimise player risk; • how to prepare players for the physical demands of the sport; and • how to recognise and manage injuries, including advice to seek treatment for soft tissue injuries and concussion [9]. The session content is developed at a national level by New Zealand Rugby in consultation with ACC. RugbySmart is delivered annually, and from the beginning a deliberate effort was made to incorporate feedback from the programme facilitators and participants into the programme for the following year. The developers of RugbySmart have worked hard to identify, understand and overcome beliefs and attitudes that may act as barriers to the uptake of injury prevention messages among the rugby community. Formal surveys of the knowledge, attitudes and behaviours of RugbySmart attendees have been conducted every second year over the life of the programme. Participant responses have led to changes in programme design or delivery [10]. For example, following discussions with participants in the early 2000s, an attempt was made to highlight the link between injury
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