Preventing sport and active recreation related injury is a global priority given its large contribution to both injury-related morbidity and longer-term chronic ill-health. Many interventions have the primary goal of reducing the risk of injury in those who play formal sport. For example, evidence-based exercise-training programs have been developed to improve neuromuscular control in the lower limb with the aim of preventing a range of lower limb musculoskeletal injuries. The talk will begin with an overview of the global evidence supporting the implementation of exercise training programs for injury prevention in sport.

Importantly, the success of such programs depends upon their adoption, implementation and maintenance by the people who deliver sports and sport training sessions, such as coaches, sports conditioning personnel, sports administrators and allied health professionals associated with teams and active people. The majority of these people work outside of the healthcare delivery system and there can be significant challenges in engaging them as the key delivery agents for safety interventions. This talk will present the latest knowledge about adopting a broad systems approach towards engaging key sport injury prevention delivery agents and end-users (coaches, conditioning staff, players/athletes, league and club administrators, peak sport bodies, etc.) in prevention efforts from the outset.

Understanding why evidence-based interventions for active people are/are not implemented is now well recognised as an international challenge for sports injury prevention research and practice. The talk will conclude with a discussion of the most pressing prevention practice and research needs relating to understanding implementation contexts and processes, including barriers and facilitators to intervention uptake and long-term maintenance of required behaviour change.