Are athletes whose families can afford the high cost of today's increasingly specialized and expensive youth sports paying another price - in higher rates of injury?

The answer appears to be yes.

New research presented at the International Olympic Committee World Conference on Prevention of Injury & Illness in Sport in Monaco in April 2014 for the first time links overuse injury rates in young athletes with their socioeconomic status.  

Researchers at Loyola University Medical Center found that the rate of serious overuse injuries in athletes who come from families that can afford private insurance is a whopping 68 percent higher than the rate for lower-income athletes whose families have public insurance (Medicaid).

The often unhealthy food choices youth athletes are offered at concession stands can be gradually replaced with healthier items without a loss of revenue, profits, or customer satisfaction, suggests a first-of-its-kind pilot study. (Laroche 2014) 

Researchers at the University of Iowa worked with the booster club in Muscatine, Iowa to add eight new healthy foods (apples, carrots and dip, chicken sandwiches, granola bars, pickles, soft pretzels, string cheese and trail mix) to the concession stand menu durning the 2009 fall season at Muscatine High football games, volleyball matches and swim meets.

The National Athletic Trainers' Association has released a new position statement on the management of sport concussion. The release came during the NATA's 5th annual Youth Sports Safety Summit in Washington, DC. in March 2014.

The statement is an update to the NATA's original 2004 concussion guidelines (Guskiewicz KM, et al. 2004) and addresses education, prevention, documentation and legal aspects, evaluation and return-to-play considerations. In particular, the authors amended the return-to-play guidelines and now recommend no return on the day the athlete is concussed. (Note, this brings the NATA in line with the consensus of experts, which has recommended no same-day return-to-play for a number of years).

The statement, created by the NATA Research & Education Foundation, will appear in the March 2014 issue of the Journal of Athletic Training,

There is good news and bad news in a first-of-its-kind study about implementation of the nation's first youth sports concussion safety legislation.

The good news is that football and soccer coaches at public high schools in Washington State nearly all reported completing the required concussion education annually, concussion knowledge among coaches was high, and nearly all reported being somewhat comfortable or very comfortable in deciding whether an athlete needed an additional evaluation for a suspected concussion.