1. Provide the title of your story or series and the names of the journalists involved.
Athletic Trainers: Protecting High School Athletes
2. List date(s) this work was published or aired.
Aug. 15-Sept. 30, 2010 The package ran in more than 20 Scripps papers and television stations, via several SHNS clients, and on a number of Web sites.
3. Provide a brief synopsis of the story or stories, including any significant findings.
This project examined an often-overlooked type of health care provider – certified athletic trainers working in secondary schools. Only about a third of the nation's schools have professional athletic trainers regularly available to students. Beyond saving lives or careers, the report showed that sports medicine specialists ensure that injured athletes receive levels of care appropriate to their condition, utilizing data from a unique government surveillance system. Specifically, we found that in locations where there were high concentrations of athletic trainers, athletes were more likely to present to emergency departments with more severe injuries, like concussions and fractures, and less likely to show up for treatment of abrasions and sprains which the trainers can usually assess and treat on site. The reverse was true in locations that had a lighter concentration of athletic trainers among the schools — places where coaches, EMTs handle injuries were more likely to refer lesser injuries and less likely to send along more serious cases to an ER. The stories also explored the role played by school athletic trainers in providing health services beyond sports, and the considerable savings in time and money the trainers bring by offering treatment and rehabilitation services in schools during and after class hours. In effect, athletic trainers serve as front-line community health providers in their schools and often in the surrounding community.
4. Explain types of documents, data or Internet resources used. Were FOI or public records act requests required? How did this affect the work?
State level data from National Athletic Trainers' Association on certified trainers working in secondary schools; data on teen sports injuries from sentinal hospital emergency room network maintained by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. This is the first time the CPSC has released state level data from this network — at Scripps request — to show a relationship between the level of athletic trainer presence in a state and the types of high school age sports injuries presenting at emergency rooms. Also utilized High School Sports Injury Surveillance network maintained by Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. Also, to create a denominator for how many public and private high schools in each state have athletic programs, we culled Web-posted rosters and databases of high school athletic federations (in some cases 2 or 3) for each state.
5. Explain types of human sources used.
Interviews with more than 100 athletic trainers, sports safety experts, parents, coaches and athletes around the country.
6. Results (if any).
The stories have been recirculated to several sports safety Web sites, were cited during a youth sports safety summit in Washington in December and were cited in support of an October recommendation by the American Academy of Neurology that a certified athletic trainer be present at all sporting events and practices where athletes are at risk of concussion.
7. Follow-up (if any). Have you run a correction or clarification on the report or has anyone come forward to challenge its accuracy? If so, please explain.
No corrections. We have written several follow-up stories on continuing efforts to improve youth sports safety, including the AAN recommendation.
8. Advice to other journalists planning a similar story or project.
Scripps' aim is to tell national stories through a local prism. This, like most of our projects, sought to present to each of our 23 markets the status of athletic trainers in their schools and some indication of the effect the presence or absence of full-time trainers has had. That required data, but also help from state and regional regulators and associations in lining up sources and background to help local sports or health reporters round out the story.