Article Text
Abstract
Background In 2019–20, approximately 52,300 Australians were admitted to hospital for sports injuries but there is limited national data to quantify injuries not requiring a hospital admission.
Aims To investigate sports injury data sources and unmet needs to inform the development of a National Sports Injury Data Asset (NSIDA) that can provide evidence for the development of targeted injury prevention strategies.
Methods Consultation occurred with 43 stakeholders to understand the data landscape and data gaps. An online survey was performed to broadly consult on the data collection issues and opportunities in community sports.
Results Stakeholders generally were supportive of a NSIDA, and were motivated to obtain a reliable evidence base, control costs (especially insurance), increase transparency about injury risk and drive safer sport through injury prevention.
The online data survey received 193 responses with 57% of respondents collecting injury data and 87% indicating willingness to have their injury data collected. Barriers to injury data collection included a lack of infrastructure, other priorities, not knowing where to start, privacy concerns and a lack of time.
Conclusion A NSIDA will need to work closely with sports organisations and the public to access existing data and build a simple data collection tool that does not burden volunteers and delivers useful data back to organisations to inform injury prevention efforts.
Learning outcomes The development of a new data collection requires long term investment and broad consultation to deliver data that will be useful for policy and research.