Official partners in the project were colleagues representing Institutions from five EU member states (Austria, France, Germany, Italy, and Greece) and Israel, with additional input from the Netherlands, Denmark, USA, UK, and the European Commission.

The first goal of the project team was to reach a unanimous definition for sports injuries. No definition is perfect, but the criteria for the one used in this project were simplicity, easiness in use, and reliability. Subsequently, each participating institution was asked to exploit existing data sources, elicit information and draft a national report, on the basis of data describing the magnitude and the dimensions of the sports injury problem. It was evident that the burden of sports injuries and their sequelae, especially among elite athletes who frequently make use of private health care services, was not well captured by EHLASS; thus, this database had to be complemented—to a various extent, depending on the country information from other sources. To this end, a large variety of sources were searched, including national health surveys, the national statistical …