National Athletic Trainers' Association

The National Athletic Trainers' Association* (NATA) is the professional membership association for 30,000 certified athletic trainers throughout the world. Recognizing the need for a set of professional standards and appropriate professional recognition, NATA has helped to unify certified athletic trainers across the country by setting a standard for professionalism, education, certification, research and practice settings. Athletic trainers are unique healthcare professionals who specialize in the prevention, diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation of injuries and illnesses.

NATA is an unfunded, non-traditional CDC partner. Since 1997, NATA has partnered with CDC's Office on Smoking and Health on key issues. One of the most recent partnerships included distributing information about MRSA to coaches, parents and players, and developing educational materials for athletes.

"Heads Up: Concussions in Youth Sports" Initiative

Many NATA members have provided expert consultation on a variety of CDC campaigns including the HHS award-winning "Heads Up: Concussions in Youth Sports." CDC developed the "Heads Up: Concussions in Youth Sports" initiative to offer information about concussions—a type of traumatic brain injury—to coaches, parents, and athletes involved in sports. As many as 3.8 million sports- and recreation-related concussions are estimated to occur in the United States each year and the initiative provides important information, including a toolkit, on preventing, recognizing and responding to these types of injuries.

High School Sports-Related Injury Surveillance Study

During the 2005–2006 school year, certified athletic trainers (ATCs) affiliated with NATA participated in the High School Sports-Related Injury Surveillance Study sponsored by CDC. Trainers at each participating school reported injury incidence and athletic exposure data for student athletes participating in nine sports: baseball, football and wrestling (for boys); softball and volleyball (for girls); and basketball and soccer (for boys and girls).

Data were reported weekly via an Internet-based surveillance system. Injuries were defined as those 1) resulting from participation in an organized high school athletic practice or competition, 2) requiring medical attention from an ATC or a physician, and 3) restricting the athlete's participation for 1 or more days beyond the day of injury. An athlete exposure was defined as one athlete participating in one practice or competition during which the athlete was exposed to the possibility of athletic injury.

The pilot study determined that an estimated 1.4 million injuries, more than 80 percent of which were new, occurred among participants in the nine high school sports during the 2005–2006 school year.

National Athletic Trainer Month

March is always National Athletic Training Month—and this year, NATA's tagline is the theme. "Health Care for Life and Sport" emphasizes the medical component of the athletic training profession, while recognizing the array of athletic training work settings.

For more information about National Athletic Trainer Month, as well as other NATA programs, please visit their Web site*.