NFL awards UW researchers $4M for hamstring injuries study
MADISON, Wis. - We are 55 days until the 2021 National Football League (NFL) season kicks off, and the NFL has teamed up with health experts from the University of Wisconsin to prevent injuries before the season even starts.
A team of researchers led by the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health was awarded a four-year, $4 million grant by the NFL to study the prevention and treatment of hamstring injuries for elite football players.
Hamstring injuries are the most common injuries suffered by NFL players and common among recreational, collegiate, and high school players.
This award is part of the league’s multi-year effort to better understand and prevent lower extremity injuries, including strains to soft tissue such as hamstrings. The findings from this project aim to determine an athlete’s propensity for hamstring strain injury and identify targets for injury mitigation, potentially reducing the injury burden on the player.
FREE DOWNLOAD: Get breaking news alerts in the FOX6 News app for iOS or Android.
"The persistent symptoms, slow healing, and high rate of re-injury make hamstring strains a frustrating and disabling injury for athletes and a challenge for sports medicine clinicians to treat," said Bryan Heiderscheit, Ph.D., professor of orthopedics and rehabilitation at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health. "To truly understand and reduce hamstring injury risk requires a study of an unprecedented size and scope, and we’re able to do that now thanks to support from the NFL."
A team of multi-disciplinary researchers will combine quantitative imaging, on-field biomechanics, and computational analytics to determine risk factors associated with initial and recurrent hamstring injuries and develop data-driven approaches to help individualize risk assessment. This innovative work will assist sports medicine clinicians to advance strategies for injury prevention and return athletes to sports quickly with reduced risk for re-injury, according to Heiderscheit.
In addition, the study will aim to provide a roadmap for future research involving orthobiologics as a treatment for muscle strain injuries.
Other researchers on the study include David Opar, Ph.D., Australian Catholic University SPRINT Centre; and Silvia Blemker, Ph.D., co-founder of Springbok Analytics.
Featured
Tosa Greek Fest is back, happening July 16-18
Brian is sampling the menu and getting a lesson in cooking a traditional cheesy Greek dish called Saganaki.