Since 1989, Sport Alliance Ontario (SAO) has been actively involved in educating coaches, trainers, teachers, students,  sport administrators and volunteers about the fundamentals of injury prevention, care and risk management.

In 2007 the Government of Ontario, from whom SAO receives funding, launched their Injury Prevention Strategy, which pointed out that most injuries are not “accidents” but rather that they are predictable and therefore preventable. It highlighted the significant personal, social and economic burden of injury to the residents of Ontario and the provincial health system. It also pointed out that sport and recreational injuries account for ten percent of major trauma cases in Ontario.

Significant as this document is, however, it does not mention the growing number of sport and recreational injuries among children and youth that don’t fit into the ‘major trauma’ category. To address this gap and to respond to the need for up-to-date sport injury reporting, the Government of Ontario approached SAO to develop an evidence-based pilot project for the purpose of collecting data pertaining to non-catastrophic injuries in sport. As a result, a 2-year initiative called the Sport Injury Surveillance Project (SISP) was developed by SAO’s Sport Safety Program. Funding for this Project is provided through a grant from the MHPS Healthy Communities Fund.