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Editorial
Including athlete voices in your sport and exercise medicine organisation – it’s time!
  1. Jane S Thornton1,2,
  2. Dawn P Richards3,
  3. Erica H Gavel-Pinos4,
  4. Jeane Lassen5,
  5. Keith Morgan6,
  6. Waneek Horn-Miller7
  1. 1 International Olympic Committee, Lausanne, Switzerland
  2. 2 Western Centre for Public Health and Family Medicine, University of Western Ontario Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry, London, Ontario, Canada
  3. 3 Five02 Labs, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
  4. 4 Athlete Partner, PLY, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
  5. 5 Athlete Partner, OLY, Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada
  6. 6 Athlete Partner, OLY, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
  7. 7 Athlete Partner, OLY, Kahnawake Mohawk Territory, Quebec, Canada
  1. Correspondence to Dr Jane S Thornton; jane.s.thornton{at}gmail.com

https://doi.org/10.1136/bjsports-2024-109589

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    Forging a strong, collective voice for sport and exercise medicine

    Increasingly, patient and public engagement/involvement in healthcare and research is being emphasised as a critical element to better outcomes.1 2 While progress has been made in the general population, the same is not true in high-performance athletes. Given that athletes have important lived experiences to share, they should be viewed as equal contributors on research and healthcare teams so that research and care align with priorities that matter to them.3 For the same reasons, athletes should engage with and inform the missions and activities of our sport and exercise medicine (SEM) organisations.

    The mission statement of the Canadian Academy of Sport and Exercise Medicine (CASEM) is: ‘to forge a strong, collective voice for sport and exercise medicine; to be a leader in advancing the art and science of sport and exercise medicine, including health promotion and disease prevention, for the benefit of all Canadians’. As CASEM President and Olympian (JST), my primary objective was to ensure that our ‘strong, collective voice’ included athletes (ie, the people we care for on a daily basis) to facilitate they have a say in setting the priorities for the organisation.

    Co-led with patient engagement specialist (DPR), we convened an Athlete Advisory Council for CASEM. One of the first athlete reactions was ‘How come this isn’t already done?’ A valid question given the positive evidence that when athletes have a say in their own training, performance and healthcare, things change for the better.4 In sporting cultures where openness about injuries is encouraged, athletes reported better outcomes.5 Moreover, athletes may also have specific needs to consider that differ from the clinical or …

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    Footnotes

    • X @janesthornton

    • Contributors JST and DPR contributed equally to idea conception and drafting, and EHG, JL, KM and WHM contributed equally to theme development. All authors contributed equally to final review of the manuscript. JST is the guarantor.

    • Funding The authors gratefully acknowledge funding support from a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Institute of Musculoskeletal Health and Arthritis Inclusive Research Patient Engagement Prize

    • Competing interests JST is a member of the editorial board of the BJSM.

    • Patient and public involvement statement Athlete partners were involved at all stages of manuscript preparation.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.