Sports Medicine | 2019
Comment on: “Incidence, Severity, Aetiology and Prevention of Sports Injuries: A Review of Concepts”
Abstract
The “sequence of prevention” model proposed by van Mechelen et al. in 1992 has served as a framework for developing sport-related injury prevention programs [1]. The authors proposed that injury prevention in sports is a cyclical process initiated by the establishment of injuryrelated problems, followed by the reconciliation of etiological frameworks, the introduction of prevention strategies, and ultimately, the assessment of these strategies [1]. The model has been pivotal in conceptualizing the value of data collection mechanisms that monitor injury incidence longitudinally and identify associated risk factors of injury [2, 3]. Although the data collected by these mechanisms have changed the landscape of sports medicine research, sports injury research continues to evolve, with novel methods to examine injury incidence, etiology, and prevention. Likewise, we suggest that the model proposed by van Mechelen et al. can evolve and be magnified to guide the process of developing evidence-based prevention strategies that are adopted and implemented as intended. The model may be expanded (Fig. 1) to contextualize the role of epidemiological evidence and subsequent research, within the larger framework of injury prevention. We suggest that the development of effective injury prevention programs involves a feedback loop between largeand small-sample evaluations.