Month: December 2016

Athletic Director Meeting on Secondary School Health and Safety

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Alicia Pike, Associate Director of Research, KSI

 

In collaboration with the National Athletic Trainers’ Association (NATA), the Korey Stringer Institute (KSI) is conducting a study assessing perceptions of medical care provided at the secondary school level from various key stakeholder groups. These stakeholders are in a position to influence the level of medical care provided to secondary school athletes and include athletic directors, principals, superintendents, parents, coaches, and legislators.

 

As part of this initiative, participants are asked if they would like to take part in a focus group session. The purpose of the focus group, similar to a group discussion, is to gain a more in depth understanding of the participants’ perceptions, and allow them to interact with each other through open dialogue in a non-threatening environment. As the study kicks off, the KSI staff couldn’t think of a better place to hold our first focus group than in Nashville, TN!

 

The National Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association (NIAAA) was holding their National Athletic Director Conference at the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center in Nashville from December 9th to the 13th. With a meeting made possible by the NATA, we recruited athletic directors for a focus group in support of this research initiative. On December 9th, Christy Eason, a University of Connecticut alum and now Assistant Professor of Athletic Training at Lasell College, and myself, conducted our very first focus group. The meeting was a success and resulted in rich dialogue between athletic directors with diverse backgrounds on various health and safety standards.

 

Dr. Douglas Casa, CEO of KSI, and Dr. Rebecca Stearns, COO of KSI, also made the trip to Nashville and were instrumental in ensuring the success of this meeting. After the focus group session, Rachael Oates, Assistant Executive Director of the NATA, and Amanda Muscatell, NATA External Marketing Manager, spoke about the history of the NATA and its growth over the years, as well as their major marketing initiative, AT Your Own Risk. To finish off the meeting, Dr. Casa presented on best practice standards for preventing sudden death in sport, focusing in on the top safety standards that athletic directors in Tennessee should have in place.

 

This meeting not only provided great insight on athletic directors’ perceptions, but also provided an opportunity to network with a unique group of people. This was only the start, but being a part of this meeting has opened my eyes to the true potential of this research initiative. I am extremely excited to see where it goes from here.

 

Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center

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6th International Conference on the Physiology and Pharmacology of Temperature Regulation

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By: William M. Adams, PhD, ATC, Vice President of Sport Safety

 

This past week (December 5-9th), I had the pleasure of representing KSI at the 6th International Conference on the Physiology and Pharmacology of Temperature Regulation. This conference is a biannual conference held in different locations around the world that brings together the world’s leading thermal physiologists to present on topics from a basic (cellular and molecular) level of thermal physiology to clinical and applied applications of that research. This year’s conference was held in Ljubljana, Slovenia, the patron city of Saint George, which is located in the central part of Slovenia.

 

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The meeting started with an in depth discussion on the association of climate change on health. A European-based project, HEAT-SHIELD, was introduced to the audience which is a group tasked with developing guidelines and policies to handle heat stress from various aspects associated with climate change. The development of a well-rounded set of guidelines is needed to address this issue, especially as Europe is seeing the effects of increasing environmental conditions and a large migration of persons from other areas in the world, which when coupled together may cause downstream detrimental effects on health as a whole.

The conference continued with various symposiums, oral presentations and poster presentations on topics related to inflammation and the thermal response, fever, metabolic influences on thermal physiology, and the influence of exercise on thermal physiology. I had the pleasure of presenting some data that I collected examining the influence of hydration on body temperature and heart rate responses during repeated bouts of exercise in the heat. The talk was well received and it prompted some great discussion amongst other physiologists.

 

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It was great being able to meet new friends, connect with others and to discuss future collaborative work with some excellent researchers. The opportunity to attend this conference and to see the beautiful city of Ljubljana was an extremely rewarding experience and I would encourage anyone that does research in this area to attend the 2018 Conference in Split, Croatia.

 

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