National Sports Injury Data Strategy

Participation in sport and active recreation has many health and social benefits, but it also carries a risk of injury. These injuries can lead to physical inactivity, which can contribute to poor health and wellbeing, as well as increased medical costs.

Despite the significance of sport and active recreation injuries, limited national data are available to inform the design and evaluation of injury prevention and management programs. To address this information gap, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) and the Australian Sports Commission (ASC) developed the National Sports Injury Data Program.

An important part of this program is establishing the National Sports Injury Data Asset (NSIDA), a national database that will capture data on sport and active recreation injuries. It will include demographic details of the injured person (e.g. age, gender, cultural and linguistic background), the activity undertaken by the person when injured, cause of injury, whether protective equipment was used, type of injury, and treatment received. These data will:

• help individuals, organisations, researchers, and policymakers understand the risks of injury in sport and active recreation and how they differ across population groups
• identify injury prevention opportunities and evaluate prevention programs in the community
• measure the costs of sport and active recreation injuries to the health system and the benefits of prevention programs
• provide ongoing surveillance to identify emerging risks.

The National Sports Injury Data Strategy (“the strategy”) outlines the plan for establishing the NSIDA by leveraging existing data sources and overcoming challenges in collecting and reporting on sport and active recreation injuries. A draft version of this strategy included a review of the data landscape and was put for public consultation in 2022 (AIHW 2022).