England Lacrosse is set to begin a major National Injury Reporting study looking at monitoring reported injuries across the sport in England.
The pioneering study will look at injuries across all ages and levels of the sport and represents one of the most significant studies into lacrosse injuries to take place outside of North America.
The main objectives of the study are to accurately report injuries in the game and to highlight any patterns or trends over time, which may allow the targeted investigation of specific areas of injury risk and the development of evidence-based strategies to reduce injury risk in lacrosse.
The study, being undertaken by England Lacrosse in partnership with Birmingham City University (BCU), will ultimately feed into worldwide research being gathered by World Lacrosse and mirrors a study currently also being undertaken by Japan Lacrosse at Waseda University.
Both Studies have been commissioned by World Lacrosse in their first year to provide the world game with valuable data outside of the North-American game.
All clubs, universities and teams are being invited to take part in the research with the study representing a unique opportunity for the game at all levels to be involved with previous studies only focused on the elite game.
The reporting forms for the study use easy to understand terminology and are designed to be able to be completed by players, coaches and volunteers with no prior medical knowledge, taking participants less than 10 minutes to complete and allowing as many people as possible to take part in the study.
Club administrators and coaches will begin to receive information over the next few weeks to further explain the details of study and to gain consent from clubs and athletes to take part in the study.
Vaughn Watson, an MRes student at BCU, will lead the data collection and research into the study under the supervision of Dr Adam Herbert and Dr Peter Thain, and will be a point of contact for everyone taking part in the study.
For more information about the study, Vaughn can be contacted at vaughn.watson@mail.bcu.ac.uk