Supporting a uK SucceSS Story: The impacT of - Research Councils ...

Health and Wellbeing:
Performance
A common cold can cause discomfort and
disrupt the lives of many of us when we are
unfortunate enough to catch one, but the
effects on an elite athlete could mean they
are unable to train or compete and this could
have serious consequences for their career.
The finely tuned bodies that athletes use
to compete with are just as susceptible to
injury and illness, but the impact is perhaps
more significant than that felt by the average
person. Researchers are looking at ways in
which the likelihood of injury and illness in
athletes is limited, so they can compete to
the best of their ability.
Preventing illness and injury
Research being led by the University of
Nottingham is looking at illness and injury in
elite sport with the aim of guiding the design
of interventions that can be used to reduce the
impact of illness and injury on performance. Injury
prevention is a key area for the International
Olympic Committee (IOC) along with other
international sports governing bodies. UK
Sport and the English Institute of Sport see the
prevention of athlete injury and illness as a way
in which athletes can improve their chances of
success, particularly in high performance sport
where the winning margins are small. In the
past only a small number of sports used injury
information to help shape their illness and injury
prevention strategies. Since the start of this
research project 43 per cent of Olympic sports
have reported using injury data to help keep their
squads in good health and free from injury. An
average of 11 days of training and 0.4 competitive
events are lost per injury and around five days of
training and 0.3 of competition events are lost per
illness, so being able to prevent athletes picking
up injuries and illnesses is an important part of
fielding the best team.
The University of Birmingham has developed a
new mobile clinical research facility called the
Health Research Bus (HRB) which is setting out
to transform the way that clinical research for
major health issues like diabetes, obesity and
ageing is carried out in the community. The bus
has state-of-the-art scanning equipment and
consultation rooms, which will enable scientists
from the university to carry out a wide variety of
clinical studies, scanning programmes and health
promotion activities anywhere in the region. It
is about to be used by athletes competing in
the London 2012 Games to monitor their bodies
during training. One particular piece of technology
it has on board is a dedicated DXA (Duel-energy
X-ray Absorptiometry) scanner, which is used for
measuring body composition and bone density.
The HRB is being run through the Wellcome
Clinical Research Facility and is a partnership
with University Hospitals Birmingham Foundation
Trust and Birmingham Children’s Hospital NHS
Trust. The HRB was supported as part of the
translational medicine strand of the Science City
Research Alliance between the University of
Birmingham and the University of Warwick.
“Since the start of this research project 43 per cent of
Olympic sports have reported using injury data to help
keep their squads in good health and free from injury. ”
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SECTION two : Health and Wellbeing