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Preventing Sports-Related Injuries

Did You Know?

  • More than 46.5 million children participate in sports each year in the United States.
  • One in three children who plays a team sport is injured seriously enough to miss practice or games.
  • Girls are up to eight times more likely to have an ACL injury than boys
  • Most organized sports-related injuries (62 percent) occur during practice rather than in games.
  • The most common types of sports-related injuries among children are sprains, muscle strains, bone or growth plate injuries, repetitive motion injuries and heat-related illness.

Working For Change

We want kids to excel in sports and love the simple pursuit of play. One of the most important ways to promote this is to reduce the number of kids being sidelined from sports-related injuries. That’s why we’ve developed easy-to-use tools to help parents, coaches and young athletes understand common sports injuries and how to prevent them.

Safe Kids also works closely with more than 200 coalitions across the country to hold free youth sports safety clinics for coaches, parents, young athletes and league organizers. The clinics provide the critical knowledge and skills essential to preventing sports injuries and emergencies in young athletes. The content for the clinics is based on relevant information and tools to combat the most common and severe injuries in sports today, including acute and overuse injuries, dehydration and concussion. Find a Sports Safety Event in your community by connecting with your local Safe Kids coalition.  

Avoiding sports-related injuries is truly a team effort. That's why Safe Kids works with parents and community leaders to urge school boards and sports leagues to adopt best practices and guidelines to address all sporting injuries among their student-athletes. Learn more about our sports safety program.

Research

Safe Kids conducts research to study the attitudes and behaviors of coaches, parents and kids as it relates to sports participation and sports injuries. These reports enable Safe Kids to shape sports safety programs along with powerful communications messages that are promoted on local and national platforms..

Partners

Safe Kids teams up with our Founding Sponsor Johnson & Johnson to support the Safe Kids Youth Sports Safety Program and its many initiatives. It’s just another example of how Johnson & Johnson continues to go above and beyond to protect the well-being of children and families. You can learn more about this partnership on our sports program page. 

Additional Resources

We also offer the following tools to help families prevent sports-related injuries: