A free course on the fundamentals of heat acclimatization and the prevention of heat illness is being offered by the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) through its website, here. The course is designed to give coaches information they need to prevent heat illness in their athletes.
Heat-related illness results in thousands of emergency room visits every year, and it is most common during the late summer when temperatures are still hot, humidity is still high, and high school and college football teams start practicing for the upcoming season.
In fact, exertional heat stroke is the leading cause of preventable death among high school athletes, as reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the Aug. 20, 2010, edition of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, available here.
The Illinois High School Association (IHSA) says on its website, “Given the hot, dry summer and the fact that fall practices begin shortly, the timeliness of this course’s release could not be better.” We tend to agree. Many regions in the country are experiencing high temperatures and drought conditions this year, but the Midwest corn belt has been hit particularly hard.
The Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association (MPSAA) also directs coaches and others to the free course, recognizing the “ongoing effort to minimize the risk of participating in high school athletics” on the part of the NFHS. But Maryland itself has developed a “model policy” schools should follow in preventing heat illness, available as a PDF file, here.
