11 January 2015
Dr. Bill Sands:
Greetings,
I would like to enlist your help in creating and supporting a national injury database for gymnastics. The database is an attempt to gather nationwide injury data by a “crowdsourcing” approach.
“Crowdsourcing is the process of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, and especially from an online community, rather than from traditional employees or suppliers.”
Many of us have called for a national injury database for gymnastics injuries. Sadly, these calls have failed because of lack of resources, imagination, funding, and will. I hope this attempt will be successful. I know that the success or failure of the database will depend on your willingness to participate and your vigilance in continually submitting injury information.
You should know that personal identifying information will not be acquired. Your participation is completely anonymous. Participants simply fill in a form. I will process the data and add it to a database. The database will be maintained offline to ensure that the dataset cannot be hacked. The results of analyses of the continually accumulating data will be published periodically on the website.
I hope you will help.
Here’s the website: GymnasticsInjuryData.com
Thanks,
Wm A Sands, PhD, FACSM, CSCS
2300 South 2100 East
Salt Lake City, UT 84109
719.313.8915wmasands (a) hotmail.com
Gymnastics Coaching.com 