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Challenge: Safety concerns among kids, parents The Play: Emphasize Prevention
From the Sport for All, Play for Life report: Children deserve environments that limit injuries and offer protections against emotional, physical and other forms of abuse. And today, many parents demand as much. FIVE KEY FINDINGS IN OAKLAND Children fear injuries differently based on their gender, race/ethnicity and age.
More than half (55%) of California secondary schools reported they either do not employ an athletic trainer or they employ an unqualified health personnel in the role. 42 That’s a concern, considering California has the second-largest number of high school athletes in the nation. Project Play’s Reimagining School Sports Playbook offers suggestions for how stakeholders can prioritize health and safety in high school sports. Oakland public high schools have no athletic trainers. “At our schools, if you get hurt, you have to see your coach for treatment,” said OAL Commissioner Franky Navarro. “There’s no rehab or training room. We’re competing against schools that can fund a full-time athletic trainer, and sometimes two or three.” Navarro hopes to soon hire three athletic trainers to serve OUSD’s 10 high schools, thanks to a three-year, $150,000 grant from the Korey Stringer Institute. Also, OUSD has committed $60,000 in 2022-23 for athletic trainer services, which will be contracted with the University of California San Francisco Sports Medicine Center for Young Athletes. “It’s a sad thing to know our kids don’t have access to athletic trainer services,” Navarro said. “I tell district leadership if tomorrow state legislation passes requiring a trainer, you’ll have to find the money. I think it’s coming down the pipeline. The question is when.”
Among Oakland youth who don’t play sports often, children who are Latino/a, Asian or Black reported far greater concerns about getting hurt than White youth. Girls worried about injuries more than boys, and elementary school students shared these concerns much more than older children. Interestingly, some of the most affluent communities (Montclair, Dimond, Laurel) and least affluent (Deep East Oakland) had the highest injury concerns by youth – three times the rate of the North Oakland, Emeryville and Berkeley border communities. California is the only state that does not regulate who can and cannot call themselves athletic trainers.
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PROJECT PLAY — AN INITIATIVE OF THE ASPEN INSTITUTE
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