Article Text
Statistics from Altmetric.com
The 2016 Consensus Statement on Concussion in Sport has recently been published in BJSM, as the major conduit for informing sports medicine practitioners and clinicians worldwide about the importance of this condition, its assessment and management.1 This information dissemination strategy has worked well for previous concussion statements and has certainly raised the profile of the issue in sports medicine circles.2
Successful dissemination of guidelines needs to consider the relevant implementation context
But publishing guidelines only in sports medicine journals means they only reach a particular target group, especially if no consideration is given to implementation and dissemination strategies more widely.2 There is no doubt that sports medicine practitioners should be one of the major target groups for this information, but there are many other stakeholder groups (eg, coaches3) that are overlooked with this approach. Ensuring effective and sustained sports safety actions across all levels of sport, such as concussion guideline adoption, requires recognition of the ecological context in which sport is delivered, how participation is undertaken and the range of both professional and volunteers who support them.4 The implementation role of the key stakeholders at each ecological …