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Hartford Healthcare’s Center for Musculoskeletal Health Helping Student Athletes Prevent Injuries

February 09, 2018

The staff at the Center for Musculoskeletal Health at Hartford Healthcare’s Bone & Joint Institute is committed to helping local high school athletes stay in the game.

To do this, they offer a number sports health programs designed to prevent athletes from getting injured. One of these is baseline testing, a free service that is used to identify areas of where student athletes may be a risk for injury.

A new two-year grant for $64,000 received from the National Federation of High School Sports will now allow staff to extend their reach to more athletes throughout the state.

“We are ecstatic to have received this grant because it will help us reach more students in the high schools we partner with,” said Stefanie Bourassa, the Sports Medicine Clinical Program Director at the Center for Musculoskeletal Health at Hartford Healthcare’s Bone & Joint Institute. “Our goal is to reduce high school injuries by 30 percent over the next three years.  To date we have tested 81 students and that number will continue to grow, especially with the help of this funding.”

The results of the testing are kept in a database that helps Bourassa and her staff keep track of the athletes’ baseline functional movement patterns. This data is then turned into a specific plan for each athlete to follow that will help them maximize their abilities and avoid injuries. The information is also used to create individual rehabilitation plans for athletes who have been injured to help them get back in the game as quickly, and safely, as possible.   

“This has been a very collaborative effort involving 25 clinicians from throughout our network,” Bourassa said. “We are discovering a lot about the effectiveness of preventative exercises and how to improve the standardization of pre-participation screens and return to sport testing.”

For more information or to register for an assessment, call 860.972.5950