There has been increasing recognition of the need for effectiveness research within the real-world intervention context of community sport. This is important because, even if interventions have been shown to be efficacious in controlled trials, if they are not also widely adopted and sustained, then it is unlikely that they will have a public health impact. There is very little information about how to best conduct such studies, but application of health promotion frameworks, such as the RE-AIM framework, to evaluate the public health impact of interventions could potentially help to understand the implementation context. Care needs to be taken when directly applying the RE-AIM framework, however, because the definitions for each of its dimensions will depend on the level/s the intervention is targeted at. This paper provides a novel extension to the RE-AIM framework (the RE-AIM Sports Setting Matrix (RE-AIM SSM)), which accounts for the fact that many sports injury interventions need to be targeted at multiple levels of sports delivery. Accordingly, the RE-AIM components also need to be measured across all tiers of possible influence on the rate of uptake and effectiveness. Specific examples are given for coachdelivered exercise training interventions. The RE-AIM SSM is specific to the community sports setting implementation context and could be used to guide the delivery of future sports safety, and other health promotion, interventions in this area.

Although coaches believed that D2E was effective in developing correct landing techniques, some modifications are needed to make it more suitable for younger players and coach education by accreditation courses could be improved to support the implementation of injury prevention programmes.

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BackgroundThe 2 most cited sports injury prevention research frameworks incorporate intervention development, yet little guidance is available in the sports science literature on how to undertake this complex process. This paper presents a generalizable process for developing implementable sports injury prevention interventions, including a case study applying the process to develop a lower limb injury prevention exercise training program (FootyFirst) for community Australian football.MethodsThe intervention development process is underpinned by 2 complementary premises: (1) that evidence-based practice integrates the best available scientific evidence with practitioner expertise and end user values and (2) that research evidence alone is insufficient to develop implementable interventions.ResultsThe generalizable 6-step intervention development process involves (1) compiling research evidence, clinical experience, and knowledge of the implementation context; (2) consulting with experts; (3) engaging with end users; (4) testing the intervention; (5) using theory; and (6) obtaining feedback from early implementers. Following each step, intervention content and presentation should be revised to ensure that the final intervention includes evidence-informed content that is likely to be adopted, properly implemented, and sustained over time by the targeted intervention deliverers. For FootyFirst, this process involved establishing a multidisciplinary intervention development group, conducting 2 targeted literature reviews, undertaking an online expert consensus process, conducting focus groups with program end users, testing the program multiple times in different contexts, and obtaining feedback from early implementers of the program.ConclusionThis systematic yet pragmatic and iterative intervention development process is potentially applicable to any injury prevention topic across all sports settings and levels. It will guide researchers wishing to undertake intervention development.

Ensuring community clubs implement centrally developed sports policy is a challenge for most sports. One hundred and eighty four (70% male, 68% aged 40 to 59 years) community Australian football club representatives (first-aid providers, administrators, parents, coaches, etc.) from across the country provided their perceptions of an Australian Football League-developed sports trainer policy and associated workforce training structure (jointly referred to hereafter as 'the policy') via an online survey. This article presents a qualitative analysis of the open-ended questions within the survey using the analytical lens of symbolic interactionism. Respondents generally supported the intent of the policy and identified many potential benefits of the policy, if adopted. They also provided insight into the organization and operation of community sports clubs and stressed that the volunteer intensive nature of community sport needs to be accommodated in the policy to enhance the likelihood of community-level acceptance and implementation. Successful community club implementation of this type of centrally developed micro-level sport policy requires that policy-makers understand and address the implementation context-related perspectives raised in this study.