Safe and Healthy Para sport project (SHAPE): a study protocol of a complex intervention within Para sport

Abstract

Elite Para athletes report a high incidence of sports injuries, illnesses and other health issues. Despite this, there are few prevention programmes in Para sport, and many of the existing prevention programmes are not adapted to Para athletes. To improve the success of preventive measures, it has been suggested that sports safety work should facilitate health promotion, including athlete health education. Therefore, the overarching aim of this project is to evaluate an accessible health promotion web platform as part of a complex intervention that aims to improve knowledge of athlete health in Para sport. In this protocol, the development, future implementation and evaluation of the intervention are described. To inform the implementation and use of such interventions, it is recommended to involve end users in the development and implementation process. Therefore, a participatory design process, including athletes and the sports organisation, was used to develop an accessible health promotion web platform. To evaluate this complex intervention, a process evaluation combining quantitative evaluation assessing causal pathways with qualitative methods assessing multifaceted pathways will be used. The primary outcomes are injury/illness incidence, athlete health parameters, health literacy and user behaviour. A cohort of elite Para athletes (n=150) from Sweden and South Africa will be invited to participate. This project will be the first that aims to improve athlete health in Para sport through pragmatic and accessible health promotion. It is a boundary-crossing project that will be conducted in a real-world sport setting, including athletes with different socioeconomic backgrounds.

Safeguarding strategies in athletes with intellectual disabilities: A narrative review

“…14,20 Despite this, human resource support structures in disabled sports tend to be more informal and less organized than they are for non-disabled sports; leaders often go without formal coaching and have poor understanding of the needs of disabled athletes. 21 Therefore, the possibility of unchecked unethical behaviorsconscious or not-is an important consideration in this context.…”

“…Because SOI and other sports programs for people with intellectual disabilities are often initiated in educational and community settings, the background risk of interpersonal violence victimization for people with disabilities in all social settings (e.g., educational, community and medical settings) is part of the risk in intellectually disabled athletes in sports settings 14,20 . Despite this, human resource support structures in disabled sports tend to be more informal and less organized than they are for non‐disabled sports; leaders often go without formal coaching and have poor understanding of the needs of disabled athletes 21 . Therefore, the possibility of unchecked unethical behaviors—conscious or not—is an important consideration in this context.…”