OHI Presents Injury Surveillance Research at ECSS and WiSEAN

Olympic Handball Ireland brought its injury surveillance research to two international conferences this summer, sharing early results from a national pilot project and helping lay the groundwork for the organisation's next step in player welfare research.

Sport Scientist Peter Higgins represented OHI at the European College of Sport Science (ECSS) congress in Lausanne, Switzerland, delivering a poster presentation on a six-month national handball pilot developed with the Institute for Sport & Health at University College Dublin. The pilot tested a coach-friendly injury report form, built so team representatives without medical training could record injuries using plain-language checkboxes instead of the clinical coding used in existing international systems. Over the pilot, ten time-loss injuries were recorded across 504 player-hours of match exposure, with rates broadly in line with published figures from elite handball.

Peter also presented at Women in Sport and Exercise Academic Network (WiSEAN), held at Loughborough University, the United Kingdom, as part of the "Strike with Purpose" series, supported by Sport Ireland's Research and Innovation Unit. His talk, "Who Gets Counted? Rethinking Injury Surveillance in Women's and Community Sport," made the case that injury surveillance has long depended on medical resources found mainly in elite sport, leaving women's and community-level athletes underrepresented in the evidence base. Handball, the project argues, is a strong test case for building more accessible tools across all levels of the game.

Why this matters:

Conferences like these give OHI's research a wider audience and a chance to be tested against international practice, helping sharpen the tools before they're rolled out more widely.

That work is already moving forward. Building on the pilot and the feedback gathered in Lausanne and Loughborough, OHI has since redesigned its injury report form and partnered with the Scottish Handball Association on a joint injury surveillance project, now live for coaches across both nations.