Oslo Sports Trauma Research Center

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About us

The Oslo Sports Trauma Research Center was established in May 2000 to prevent injuries and other health problems in sports through research on risk factors, injury mechanisms, and prevention methods, with a particular focus on football, team handball, and alpine skiing/snowboarding, and on the most common and serious injury types.

The Oslo Sports Trauma Research Center is based at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences, with core funding from the Royal Norwegian Ministry of Culture, and project grants from a number of different sources, including the South-Eastern Norway Regional Health Authority, the Research Council of Norway, the International Olympic Committee, The Savings Bank Foundation DNB, the Norwegian Olympic and Paralympic Committee & Confederation of Sport, and Norsk Tipping AS.

In 2009, the Oslo Sports Trauma Research Center was inaugurated as a FIFA Medical Center of Excellence. The same year the center was also selected as one of the four inaugural IOC Research Centers for Prevention of Injury and Protection of Athlete Health, now counting eleven such centers around the world.

The center is chaired by professor Lars Engebretsen and professor Roald Bahr.

Research on sports injury prevention was previously mainly observational studies outlining injury risk in various sports, their incidence, pattern and severity. However, few studies had been designed to provide in-depth information on injury mechanisms and risk factors – information needed in order to propose relevant preventive measures.

Based on this background, the Oslo Sports Trauma Research Center was established as a joint venture Oslo University Hospital and the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences. The main objective is to develop a long-term research program on sports injury prevention, as the hub in the wheel of a national and international network of scientists and clinicians interested in sports injury prevention research.