By Samantha Scarneo, MS, ATC, Director of Sport Safety

As conference season is upon us, KSI kicked off the summer first attending the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) Annual Meeting. This year’s ACSM annual meeting was held in Boston, MA and proved to be one of the most special conferences for KSI. KSI’s CEO, Dr. Douglas Casa was honored with the opportunity to give one of the President’s Lectures on Thursday morning of the conference. Dr. Casa’s presentation began with his personal story of his own heat stroke and how that grew to his passion for saving lives in the realm of exertional heat stroke and other causes sudden death in sport and physical activity. The presentation also included a detailed timeline of he inception of KSI and the work that KSI is doing to this day.  Change takes time, dedication, and perseverance; Dr. Casa certainly made that known to those in attendance.

Over the course of several years, KSI has been able to assist over 30 states in their quest to make policy changes to make sport safer at all levels of competition. Heat acclimatization, environmental conditions, AED policies, coaching education, and conditioning sessions were some of the policy change topics presented upon. However, despite the positive changes, we have observed an increase in non-traumatic deaths over the past few years. Dr. Casa stressed, that although important changes have been made, there is still work to be done to identify why this trend is occurring and how we can mitigate these deaths. The presentation was well received to a ballroom full of attendees. Congratulations to Dr. Casa on this milestone achievement!

The conference also included presentations by other KSI staff:

• William Adams, PhD, ATC – Thirst As A Marker of Hydration Status During an After Exercise in the heat
• Lesley Vandermark, PhD, ATC– Beverage Content Influences Voluntary Fluid Intake During Exercise: A Systematic Review
• Yuri Hosokawa, MAT, ATC – Assessing Warm Weather Race Preparedness Using the Heat Stress Score
• Samantha Scarneo, MS, ATC – Lower Extremity Injury Risk in Youth Female Basketball Athletes with and without a History of Concussion

Annual meetings allow professionals to re-connect with old colleagues, make new relationships and build upon their knowledge base by attending the several sessions. ACSM has always been an educational event that each of us look forward to every year, and this year was no different. We thank all the presenters at the meeting along with the staff who were able to put on such a great event. It was great to see all of our former colleagues and friends and we look forward to seeing everyone again soon!