In honor of Pride Month, throughout June the NATA Now blog will highlight NATA’s LGBTQIA+ resources to assist members in their pursuit of providing compassionate, culturally competent patient care to all.

By Michelle Boling, PhD, LAT, ATC, Incoming NATA Convention Program Committee Chair

A new virtual workshop targeted toward athletic trainers who are interested in understanding the health care needs and disparities of LGBTQIA+ patients is available starting April 28 in the NATA Professional Development Center.

UPDATE: Caring for a suspected spine-injured athlete is a team effort – which is why NATA wants to ensure your entire sports medicine team has a chance to gain a deeper understanding of recently published recommendations from the NATA Spine Injury in Sport Group.

The first event of its kind, the 2021 NATA Secondary School Sessions – held virtually Wednesdays and Thursdays, April 21-May 13 – will provide attendees a unique educational experience designed to advance patient care and enhance policies in the secondary school setting.

When the COVID-19 pandemic took hold in March 2020, Broadway went dark and theaters across the country closed, forcing performers and dance companies to figure out how to navigate the unknown circumstances ahead of them.

What distinctive characteristics and behaviors guide the athletic training profession and are of importance to athletic trainers? This was the question the NATA Professional Responsibility in Athletic Training Committee set out to answer when it began researching the shared professional values (PVs) of athletic training.

Like much of the world, in March 2020, colleges and universities, as well as secondary schools, shut down to help stifle the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. For some colleges and universities, that meant students were sent home – that’s if they could go home. International students, graduate students and medical students who didn’t and couldn’t go home had to remain on campus.

In the near 60,000-person town of Marietta, Georgia, Jeff Hopp, LAT, ATC, joined Marietta High School in 2002 as the only athletic trainer on the sports medicine team, which also included a physician and six athletic training student aides.

After years of discussion and brainstorming, the NATA Council on Practice Advancement will hold the first-ever NATA COPA Con 2021 Virtual Conference on Practice Advancement live from 2 to 6 p.m. CST March 26 and from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. CST March 27, and on-demand through April 27.