Preventing sports injuries: opportunities for intervention in youth athletics.

Participation in youth sports has steadily grown over the past 30 years and continues to rise. During the 1998-1999 school year over 360,000 collegiate athletes and almost 6.5 million high school athletes participated in sports. This expansion has been accompanied by an increased awareness of the injury problem associated with participation in youth sports. Estimates are that one-third of high school athletes will sustain an injury during a sports season serious enough to result in time lost from participation. While there may always be some risk associated with sports participation, health professionals can actively encourage injury prevention. In this paper, we describe the benefits of sport participation, the injury problem associated with sports, injury prevention frameworks, and conclude by discussing the changing role of the team physician in youth sports.