Prince George, B.C. – The 2015 Canada Winter Games are already providing legacies in terms of recreational facilities which have been updated or built entirely from scratch. But another legacy resulting from these games will last long into the future in northern BC.

Sport safety practices and education along with specific training in dealing with injuries such as concussion will be another benefit of the games, not only in Prince George but right across the region. Since June, the Northern Safe Sport Tour has been visiting fifteen communities, from Fort Nelson and Fort St. John to 100 Mile House and Williams Lake, Prince Rupert to Valemount and communities in between, providing training and education to medical volunteers and community members in the run-up to the games in February.

The tour and the 2015 Canada Winter Games Sport Injury Education Program are a collaboration involving Northern Health, WINBC, PacificSport Northern BC, Sport Med BC, the 2015 CWG Host Society, Play Safe Initiative and the Tom Pashby Sport Safety Fund.   The tour wraps up in Prince George this weekend with a SportSmart Workshop tonight and an eight-hour Athletic Taping course tomorrow, both taking place at CNC.

Dr. Anne Pousette of Prince George is the Executive Director of WINBC (Promotion of Wellness in Northern BC) and is also a member of the medical services committee with the Canada Winter Games. She says “the overall idea was that we needed to prepare medical volunteers from the north to work at the games who had the right credentials and training for those positions. But at the same time we wanted to ensure that we leveraged that opportunity so that people from around the region gained new knowledge that they could take back to their communities and back into their sport to expand our knowledge in northern BC about sport injury prevention and concussion awareness and management.”

“There is a lot of focus on concussion and the fact that we haven’t managed it so well in the last 25 years because we weren’t aware of a lot of the pieces. So this has been a great platform to take all of that forward.” She says the tour of northern BC has meant “that we can get everybody in a room and everybody brings something to the table that works together on networking, get that quality education and we can deliver it around the region.”

Dr. Pousette says this isn’t just the first time such an opportunity has presented itself in this part of BC but “likely the first time it has ever been tackled in Canada actually as we’ve been doing some innovative things. The greater opportunities of the games are often missed because everybody’s focus is on the fourteen days (of the games). So there have been a number of organizations working together to make sure we maximize these opportunities for the greater benefit of the region. And this will be captured eventually in documents so that we can pass this along to other jurisdictions in Canada.”

Dr. Pousette says another important piece is that “we’ve been looking for opportunities to train facilitators so that in the future these same courses can be taught in the north at much less expense because we will have trained a couple of people to deliver these workshops.” She says one will be in the northwest and one around Prince George.

Half of the focus of the Safe Sport Tour is on concussion and half on injury prevention, in other words, how can things be done In a safer way. The Injury Prevention Co-ordinator with Northern Health, Denise Foucher, says “recognizing that sport, leisure and recreation activities can put people at risk, we want them to recognize the risks and take action to prevent injury. Certainly concussion is a significant, under-reported, usually under-treated injury for many people because either the athlete is concerned about being pulled off their event, or the coach wants to make sure that everybody gets their opportunity on the field, or the ice or the ski hill. But concussion can happen to anybody doing anything. We know that youth are more at risk and we just want people to learn what concussions could look like. Is it just a blow to the head or can you fall on your backside and sustain a concussion just as easily?”

Foucher says the issue poses several questions including “what do you do if you suspect a concussion, where do you go, who do you seek help from, and then how do you manage the treatment and care so that the person can recover fully before they are re-engaging with another activity? Once a person has suffered a concussion they are at a significantly increased risk of getting another concussion and then it can take longer for that healing process of the brain to happen. We’re working with our staff, the volunteers who will be working with the Canada Winter Games and with the community members at large to raise the profile, understanding and awareness of concussion and prevention.” There are two, back-to-back 90-minute workshops running from 6 to 9:30 tonight at CNC. The first deals with preventive strategies, while the second is on concussion management.

An Athletic Taping course runs from 9 am to 5 pm Sunday at CNC. It’s a very hands-on course that covers many of the taping techniques used in sports as well as procedures used in injury prevention, minimizing the chance of further injury and aiding the healing process once an injury has occurred.  Both the Saturday and Sunday workshops will be held in Room 1-311 at CNC.

There will be about 150 health volunteers on hand for the 2015 games, one hundred from the northern health region and another 50 from across Canada. There will be about 50 physicians on hand, along with nurses, physiotherapists, athletic therapists, chiropractors, massage therapists, pharmacists, dentists, in people from just about every field. And Dr. Pousette says “Northern Health also has to look after the all of those people who come to watch as well so 15-thousand extra people. So there’s a whole plan around how we maintain all of our essential services in the north. So, for example, we have medical volunteers coming from Vanderhoof to Prince George but we have to make sure we still have people in Vanderhoof to look after the people there, so it’s a very complex undertaking and tremendous numbers of volunteers working hard to come up with a really great plan for this.”