Health equity is one of the main challenges facing youth sports in today’s environment. Many communities have significant struggles with overall health equity and as a result, the discrepancies impact the ability of youth to play sports. As the panel examined the factors necessary to reach the 63×30 goal, the discussion focused on removing barriers and getting kids more active.
Aspen Institute has spent considerable time researching the issues and advocating for a better youth sports model for the United States. The State of Play Reports for various communities have identified the needs to improve the outcomes in those communities.
Project Play developed a community council that looked at some of the important findings:
- Long term impact of ACL injuries
- The importance of mental health first aid
- Access to athletic trainers
- Better neuromuscular training
- Need to expand the funnel of athletes
- Increasing accessibility to local (as opposed to travel) sports leagues
- Encouraging sports sampling
- Training all coaches
Since there are so many different opportunities to impact health equity across these communities, the needs require a significant investment by local philanthropies, sports teams, sponsors and governmental agencies. The downstream economic impacts on the local communities and the the health care system would be vastly improved by a robust investment, changing the question from “SHOULD WE INVEST” to “HOW CAN WE AFFORD NOT TO INVEST.”
Hopefully over the course of the next decade we will see a substantial shift in the way that the impact ROI is calculated in these areas.
