Evaluating the impact of injury prevention interventions in child and adolescent sports using the RE-AIM framework and CERT: A systematic review

• Published in: PloS one 2023-07, Vol.18 (7), p.e0289065-e0289065
• Main Authors: Hughes, Thomas, O'Hara, John, Burton, Alan, London, Nick, Emmonds, Stacey
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adolescents; Aged; Analysis; Biology and Life Sciences; Child; Children; Children & youth; Compliance; Consensus; Criteria; Effectiveness; Exercise; Feasibility studies; Health aspects; Health risks; Humans; Injury prevention; Internal validity; Intervention; Maintenance; Medicine and Health Sciences; Mental health; Motor skill; Motor task performance; Musculoskeletal Diseases; People and Places; Physical fitness; Physiological aspects; Prevention; Public health; Research and Analysis Methods; Rugby; Soccer; Social Sciences; Sports; Sports injuries; Systematic review; Teenagers; Youth; Youth Sports
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0289065

Participation in sport is a popular pastime for children and adolescents that improves their physical health, mental health and motor skills. Musculoskeletal injuries are a relatively common downside of sports participation and can have negative long-term consequences. Injury prevention programmes have demonstrated effectiveness in child and adolescent sports, provided compliance is adequate. However, little is known about the factors which relate to their impact on the wider community and whether the prevention programmes have been adopted and maintained in the long-term. The objective of this review was to assess the current literature on exercise-based injury prevention interventions in child and adolescent sports (aged under 19 years) against the 'Reach', 'Effectiveness', 'Adoption', 'Implementation', 'Maintenance' (RE-AIM) framework and Consensus of Exercise Reporting Template (CERT), to ascertain level of reporting for the components which relate to external validity. Seven electronic databases; PubMed, Medline, SPORTDiscus, PsycINFO, CINAHL, Scopus and The Cochrane Library, were searched from date of inception to July 2022 using the themes of: 'Child and Adolescent', 'Sport', 'Injury' and 'Prevention'. Eligibility criteria included: Experimental trial design, exercise-based intervention programmes, primary outcome of injury incidence and participants aged under 19 years. Two reviewers assessed each trial independently against the RE-AIM model dimension items checklist (RE-AIM MDIC) and Consensus on Exercise Reporting Template (CERT) before reaching a consensus on reporting. Forty-five unique trials met the eligibility criteria. Mean reporting level for all studies across the whole RE-AIM MDIC was 31% (SD ± 16.2%, Range 7-77%). The domain of 'effectiveness' was the most comprehensively reported (60%), followed by 'implementation' (48%), 'reach' (38%), 'adoption' (26%) and 'maintenance' (7%). The mean reporting score for the CERT was 50% (SD ± 20.8, range 0-81%). Published data on injury prevention in child and adolescent sports is highly focussed on the effectiveness of the intervention, with little consideration given to how it will be adopted and maintained in the long-term. This has led to considerable gaps in knowledge regarding optimal programme implementation, with a lack of data on adoption and maintenance contributing to the gap between research and practice. Future research needs to place greater focus on external validity and consider incor