Information about a piece of news titled First IOC meeting of the 4 IOC Research Centers in Cape Town
First IOC meeting of the 4 IOC Research Centers in Cape Town
Intoduction
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the University of Cape Town have convened the Oslo Sports Trauma Research Center and the two other newly appointed IOC research centers to a first common gathering on injury and disease prevention research.
The world leaders on sports injury research are located in South Africa, Canada, Australia, and in Norway.
The four centers were successful in a competition to receive a 4-year IOC grant announced for the stimulation of further research and collaboration on prevention of injury and protection of athlete health.
The IOC will support established research centers that have demonstrated clinical, educational, and research expertise in elite sports, by giving them an annually grant of CHF 100.000 for a period of four years.
The centers must be affiliated with clinical medicine as well as education.
Under the Head of Scientific Activities, Lars Engebretsen, the IOC wants to promote injury and disease prevention and the improvement of physical health of the athlete by:
- Establishing long-term research programs on injury and disease prevention (including studies on basic epidemiology, risk factors, injury mechanisms and intervention).
- Fostering collaborative relationships with individuals, institutions and organizations to improve athletes’ health
- Implementing (and collaborating with) applied, ongoing and novel research and development within the framework and long-term strategy of the IOC
- Setting up knowledge translation mechanisms to share scientific research results with the field throughout the Olympic Movement and sports community and to convert these results into concrete actions to protect the health of the athletes
The two days in Cape Town have been used for presentations of the research units and their programs, as well as extensive discussions on how the four centers can work together within the IOC frame (IOC press release).
The Oslo Sports Trauma Research Center was represented by Roald Bahr, co-chair of the Center, and Grethe Myklebust. In addition, Lars Engebretsen, Torbjørn Soligard and Kathrin Steffen participated from Norway in their roles as IOC employees.
The four research centers are:
- UCT/MRC Research Unit of Exercise Science and Sports Medicine (ESSM), University of Cape Town, South Africa
- Sport Injury Prevention Research Centre, University of Calgary, Canada
- The Australian Centre for Research Into Sports Injury and its Prevention (ACRISP), Accident Research Centre, Monash University Melbourne, Australia
- Oslo Sports Trauma Research Center (OSTRC), Norwegian School of Sport Sciences, Oslo, Norway