title: Football (soccer) safety equipment use and parental attitudes toward safety equipment in a community youth sports program.
abstract: While a growing number of children are playing football (soccer), there are limited data on prevalence of injuries, actual use of football safety equipment (SE), and parental attitudes about football SE. We distributed a self-administered survey by mail to parents of all players enrolled in a community recreation youth football program. Parents of 865 children responded. Overall, 32 (3.7%) children were reported as having injuries requiring medical/dental evaluation. Upper/lower extremities were the most commonly injured sites. Shinguards (SGs) were the only equipment commonly used. While there was high parental support for SG use (97.4%) and moderate support for mouthguards (MGs; 53.8%), there was less support for other SE. Many parents were unfamiliar with available SE, but they were mostly willing to pay for it. In a community youth sports program, reports of football injuries were low as was the use of football SE other than SGs.
authors.affiliation: Department of Family Medicine, University of Colorado Denver, Denver, Colorado, CO 80238, USA. morteza.khodaee@ucdenver.edu
authors.forename: Morteza
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Khodaee
authors.forename: Michael D
authors.initials: MD
authors.lastname: Fetters
authors.forename: Daniel W
authors.initials: DW
authors.lastname: Gorenflo
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D011482:Protective Devices; D012916:Soccer / Q000293:injuries* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D019876:Sports Equipment