Adults,
Have you ever wondered what happens when a young kid gets injured while playing youth sports? Kids can be injured while playing youth sports and if not addressed it can be very harmful for that kid and this matters because kids are starting to get more serious injuries and can suffer from chronic pain to long term effects.
It is true that kids are starting to get more serious injuries and sports are more dangerous. In an article, titled “ Competitive Youth Sports Injuries Today Can Lead to Permanent Damage Tomorrow, If Proper Precautions Aren’t Taken” by Dr. Mark Sanders was talking about how dismal these youth sports injuries are getting how they can affect youth athletes in the long run. Then, the article said, “The seriousness of these youth sports injuries is causing concern to myself and the staff here at the Sanders Clinic for Orthopedic Surgery and Sports Medicine, because the injuries these kids are sustaining today have the potential to cause permanent damage that affect future joint stability” (Sanders). This is very intriguing because of what it says. The article saying that the worse these injuries are getting for the young age of youth athletes is very scary because these injuries can result in athletes to have medical problems and pain to deal with as they live and grow on. That is very unfair because people will have a great impact on someone’s life for just wanting to play a youth sport.
Another reason that Sports injuries in young athletes should be addressed is because of the pain athletes will have to go through as they grow and it can have permanent damage on youth athletes. Another article titled, “10 Sports Injuries With Life Long Consequences” published by Healthplus in April 2017 and reviewed by Tan Ken Jin (lOrthopedic Surgeon) explains these ideas with great detail and it talks about the way these injuries happen. The article says, “Also known as a kneecap dislocation, a patella dislocation occurs when the kneecap comes out of its normal position… As with most injuries, kneecap dislocation leaves you in pain and you’ll experience temporary inability to walk. Repeated dislocations, however, can make that a permanence.” (Health Plus ). ThIs is important to address because the consequence of not addressing this emerging problem can hold. From these serious injuries, young athletes are starting to get in can result as, “ inability to walk” which just sounds asinine because of just having the thought of wanting to just have fun playing sports but you can not because you have been temporarily disabled due to injuries that could have been prevented. And yet also you can also have permanent injuries for the rest of life just because of and issues not being addressed.
The community that was surveyed were people from Oakland available in my community. I surveyed a mixture of teens and adults. I acquired around 17 survey respondents.
Figure 1: As you can see from the survey 76% of respondents that took the survey have played sports in middle school or highschool. This statistic is expected. This is significant because it is common to be an athlete.
Figure 2: From the question that was asked(How many times have you been injured playing a sport)We saw that 75% out of 76% that played sports have been injured once or more from playing sports. This is important to point out because It is common for any person to play a sport and get injured which can have life changing effects, which is a health disparity because of the chances of getting injured if one were to play sports.
Figure 3: Then looking at Figure 3, it was discovered that 58% of the respondents believed that an athlete is most likely to get injured playing football as a youth athlete. This was surprising seeing that most of the respondents had said in another question that their favorite sport is soccer. This brings me to my second point which is there were some knowledge gaps from the question such as, the fact we did not know what sport the respondents that were injured were playing when they got injured. Another problem was we did not know what the sports they played were. Based on the survey the community does not have any needs because there was no obvious disparities in the survey.
As a health advocate I would only take a few steps such as raising awareness of the possible long term effects of getting injured severely while playing sports
Aim 1: Educate I would first make a pamphlet that explains the long term effects of getting injured severely at a younger age so that way the reader gets the full gravity of the situation. Then I would next explain in the pamphlet that the ways to prevent the common injuries and how an athlete can stop injuries. I would do this both in school and in shelter in place.
Aim 2:. If I had unlimited resources I would have a commercial skit on SNL with D’rose( Derrick Rose) the nba player. And in that skit would show him getting injured and people would hype up his return but then his first game he would not be as good as he originally was. This would be a smart move because it would make injuries taken more serious and would raise awareness for those that do not have the consequences of getting serious injury at a young age.
In conclusion, raising awareness for Sports injuries in minors should happen because everyone knows someone who has been injured or have been injured themselves.
- Durran
