How avoiding running-related injuries could save millions of dollars

CALGARY- A Calgary research team is recruiting runners for a study they hope will help predict and prevent running injuries.

“Running injuries, unfortunately are very common,” explains Dr. Reed Ferber, director of Calgary’s Running Injury Clinic. “Over the last 35 years , it’s been consistently reported that almost 50 per cent of runners get injured every year. That number really hasn’t gone down, despite advancements in footwear, in gear and in training programs.”

For the last decade, the Running Injury Clinic has been building a database, collecting information from runners from more than 30 different clinics and 12 universities worldwide.  Now, that database has grown large enough for researchers to launch the Green Runner Project.

“What we have is a large group of runners that have been screened in a rigorous way, they’re all healthy, they haven’t been injured in a long time and they’re all relatively high end runners,” he explains.

By clustering these runners in the “Green Zone”, Ferber believes statistical models can begin to predict who is at low, moderate or high risk for specific running related injuries. The ultimate goal of the project is to predict injuries so they can be prevented.

“Here in Canada there are about 16 million runners, and half of them get injured every year,” says Ferber. “If we can reduce that even by five per cent, that’s hundreds of millions of dollars that we can save from a health care standpoint in terms of lost wages and time spent in clinics.”

To  participate in the Green Runner project, contact the study’s research coordinator, Karen, at kpulsife@ucalgary.ca or by calling 403-220-7411.