Improving Student Athlete Safety and Well-being [Podcast Series]

• [:56] Dr. Bantham introduces her guests, Dr. Brian Biagioli and Dr. Jim Borchers

  • Dr. Brian Biagioli is Board Member of the US Registry of Exercise Professionals and Executive Director for the National Council on Strength and Fitness Board for Certification. 

  • Dr. Jim Borchers is Chief Medical Officer of the Big Ten Conference and Co-Founder and President of the U.S. Council for Athlete’s Health.

• [1:28] Goal of best practice recommendations on conditioning programs

  • “For too long we have stood by and really in only certain little corners of athletics paid attention to these issues. But now, medical organizations, fitness organizations, athletic organizations have come together and have really decided that we need to have a standardization to this and we need to professionalize what we're doing.”

• [6:16] Best practice recommendations as guardrails

  • “The guardrails really go into what we talk about in the six pillars around sportsmanship, protective equipment, acclimatization and conditioning, emergency preparedness, the responsibilities of athletic personnel, and then annual education and training requirements. And what we've done is codify what it means to be prepared, to be responsible, and to put into place those things that will be proactively preventing situations where athletes can really suffer these types of catastrophic events.”

• [8:42] Development of best practice recommendations

  • “So the next step was to look at a different stakeholder group was the strength conditioning coaches, and the three organizations that provide accredited certification, which is recognized throughout the United States, were ideal for creating the foundations, particularly for the research that was utilized.”

• [10:19] Standard of care

  • “So, as you correlate those associations and those organizations endorsing recommendations, they become best practice. And they become a real roadmap for us to follow and they become a roadmap that legal experts and risk management experts follow when they think about athletics in organizations, and especially in institutions and colleges. And this now has become standard of care.”

• [13:28] Improving the health, safety and well-being of athletes

  • “When we talk about athletics we need to know that people that are working with athletes—whether that be in a medical space or whether that be in a strength and conditioning or exercise performance space or even in a sport coach space—are meeting certain standards when it comes to the health, safety and well-being of athletes.”

• [18:50] Continuing education

  • “[W]e want everyone to understand that you may not meet the requirements today. But this is an ongoing forward effort to becoming the best that you can be and complying with these requirements as quickly as possible.”

• [24:45] Registry of exercise professionals

  • “If it's the US Registry for Exercise Professionals, we need to publicize that and let individuals know they can go there and find out whether individuals are meeting best practice just as you can, for example, with a medical provider and board certification. And so all of this to say that it shows the commitment to health and safety and helps to make certain that we don't hear responses like, oh, I never even knew that that person didn't meet those standards, or I didn't even know that they had to meet those standards. I think we're educating the public as well in this endeavor.”

• [28:07] Minimizing risk of injury and death

  • “And as long as everyone's moving in the right direction, we're going to see the risk of injury and death go down incrementally. And that's our goal here.”

• [30:02] Call to action

  • “And so my call to action is, is to engage. And you have to engage and you have to being a willing participant to make certain that you're doing what you're illustrating to those around you.  And so I hope that this is a first step in really applauding leadership from this profession to lead other professions to be able to illustrate to their constituents that they're engaged in the health, safety and well- being of athletes everywhere.”