Introduction: Although sport participation is a key contributor to the physical and mental health of children and youth, exposure to subconcussive head impacts in football has raised concerns about safety for athletes. Purpose: To demonstrate the efficacy of incorporating targeted football drills into a team's practice routine with the goal of improving players' technique and reduce exposure to subconcussive head impacts. Methods: Seventy high school football players (age, 16.4 ± 1.1 yr) were tested PRE season using a sport-specific functional assessment. Results from the testing were used to inform the design of a prepractice intervention aimed at improving tackling and blocking techniques while reducing exposure to head impacts. The assessment included drills which evaluated the players' ability to safely tackle, and block while simulating game-like situations. Testing was repeated at MID season (internal control) without an intervention, and again at POST season (experimental), after introduction of the prepractice intervention between these timepoints, administered twice weekly. All testing sessions were recorded, and subsequently reviewed by trained graders based on selected criteria defined by football coaches. A subset of 19 participants wore in-helmet accelerometers to assess the effectiveness of the intervention in decreasing head impacts during practice. Results: Significant improvements in blocking and tackling techniques were observed after the introduction of the intervention (P < 0.0001). Participating athletes also showed better techniques when evaluated in new game-like situations, postseason, providing evidence for proper acquisition and generalizability of these safer habits. Finally, frequency of head impacts (>15g) per practice was significantly reduced by~30% after 1 month of training. Conclusion: Our results suggest that data-informed methods can be used to improve coaching practices and promote safer play, which can have a positive public health impact moving forward.

The paper examined the effectiveness of an inschool intervention for adolescents designed to target emotional regulation skills related to risky behaviors. The Cognitive Emotion Regulation Intended for Youth (CERTIFY) program was delivered to at-risk adolescents in Montreal, Canada. Participants were drawn from an alternative high school and a dropout prevention program within an urban high school. The pilot was a student-focused therapeutic modality without parental intervention for maladaptive cognitive emotion regulation (CER) and engagement in risky behaviors. CERTIFY is a school-based group intervention targeting CER strategies and was implemented with 28 adolescents from two English language secondary schools. The intervention was conducted for 12 weeks for the intervention group versus controls who were offered usual school supports. Program outcomes were evaluated using the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire and Risky Behaviors Questionnaire for Adolescents. The intervention group made significant gains with regard to using adaptive CER strategies. Specifically, the intervention resulted in increases in self-reported use of positive reappraisal and refocusing on planning. No significant gains were found for reducing the use of maladaptive CER strategies or risky behaviors. This school-based intervention program for high-risk adolescents increased overall use of adaptive CER strategies and provided insight for future intervention design.

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