Sports Injury Prevention and Control: A Public Health Approach Integrating Innovations in Technology and Implementation Science

Sports and physical activity are widely recognized as pillars of public health, yet sports-related injuries represent a substantial and often underestimated global burden. Musculoskeletal injuries, concussions, and overuse syndromes affect individuals across all ages, sexes, sport types, and participation levels, from elite athletes to recreational participants and school-age youth. Beyond immediate physical harm, these injuries carry significant long-term consequences, including chronic pain, osteoarthritis, mental health sequelae, and reduced quality of life, alongside considerable direct and indirect socioeconomic costs to healthcare systems and society. Despite decades of research establishing effective preventive strategies, including neuromuscular training programs, load management protocols, and structured warm-up routines, a persistent gap remains between evidence and real-world implementation. Uptake of evidence-based interventions remains low across community, school, and mass-participation sport settings, exacerbated by structural inequities tied to socioeconomic status, geographic access, and resource availability. Simultaneously, rapid advances in wearable sensors, artificial intelligence (AI), computer vision, and the Internet of Things (IoT) are opening new frontiers in injury risk monitoring and prediction, yet the clinical and public health validity of these tools requires rigorous evaluation before widespread deployment.This Research Topic aims to close the critical gap between sports injury science and real-world public health action. We seek to consolidate current knowledge on sports injury epidemiology while actively integrating two transformative dimensions: technology-driven risk monitoring and implementation science. The goal is to trace the full chain from evidence generation to policy and practice, addressing not only what works in injury prevention, but also how effective measures can be scaled and sustained across diverse populations and settings. By bringing together epidemiologists, sports medicine clinicians, public health researchers, engineers, and implementation scientists, this Research Topic aspires to generate actionable insights that reduce injury incidence, promote health equity, and inform evidence-based public health policy at local, national, and international levels.We welcome original research, systematic reviews, meta-analyses, methodological papers, policy analyses, and implementation studies addressing topics including, but not limited to:● Population-based surveillance and burden estimation of sports injuries, including incidence, recurrence, disability, healthcare use, and economic costs● Social, environmental, and structural determinants of sports injury risk, including inequities related to age, sex, disability, socioeconomic status, geography, and access to safe sport environments● Digital health and data-driven approaches for injury surveillance, load monitoring, risk prediction, and early warning, including validation, usability, ethics, and equity implications● Development and evaluation of preventive interventions in schools, community sport, recreational settings, and other real-world contexts● Implementation science approaches examining adoption, fidelity, acceptability, sustainability, and scale-up of evidence-based prevention programs● Policy and systems research on guidelines, governance, cross-sector collaboration, cost-effectiveness, and public health strategies to support safer participation in sport and physical activity Topic editors: Datao Xu, Huiyu Zhou, Ukadike Chris Ugbolue Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/80410/sports-injury-prevention-and-control-a-public-health-approach-integrating-innovations-in-technology-and-implementation-science