NATA Now

By John Doherty, ATC, PT

Baseball, basketball and football may be our three biggest spectator sports. Beyond filling stadiums and arenas, they have plenty of participants at the youth and high school levels.
 
Despite their popularity, these sports are far outdone by another in terms of participation. Furthermore, without this sport’s most fundamental aspect, the other three wouldn’t be possible at all; for where would those “big three” spectator sports be without running?
 

The Adolescent Female Athlete Triad
 
By Vineeta T. Swaroop, MD, Assistant Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery
Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, IL
 

NATA initially launched its #ATsAre awareness campaign back in June, when convention attendees were asked to complete the phrase “Athletic trainers are ____” on a whiteboard. Recently, the #ATsAre campaign officially became a contest, and settled into its digital home at the NATA 2015 convention website. ATs and AT students are encouraged to submit their word (or words) as often as they’d like through Nov. 14.
 

By Jeremy Hawkins, PhD, ATC

In 1871, Philip P. Bliss, an American composer and conductor, published the following:
 
Brightly beams our Father’s mercy,
From His lighthouse evermore,
But to us He gives the keeping
Of the lights along the shore.
 
Refrain:
Let the lower lights be burning!
Send a gleam across the wave!
Some poor fainting, struggling seaman
You may rescue, you may save.
 
Dark the night of sin has settled,
Loud the angry billows roar;

San Francisco 49ers rookie Marcus Lattimore has been making headlines lately, and still has yet to play one minute in his NFL career. As NFL commentators and critics debate whether he’ll be removed from the team’s non-football injury list to the active roster for the Rams game on Oct. 13, Lattimore’s nonprofit foundation is generating media buzz over a new concussion awareness initative benefitting South Carolina's young football athletes.
 

The Professional Development Committee (PDC) is working on the development of a Manual Therapy Certificate of Completion. The certificate will be launched during 2015. Those wishing to earn the certificate will complete several online modules and will complete the certificate by attending in-person sessions. Within the certificate there will be three tracks - upper extremity, lower extremity and spine. Several ATs who are leaders in the manual therapy field are already engaged with Jay Scifers, DScPT, LAT, ATC, and Chad Krawiec, MS, ATC, of the PDC in the development of the certificate.

The saying goes "spring forward, fall back," but from we sit at the NATA office, the beginning of October has quickly turned into one of our busiest times of year.
 

The results of our presidential election are finalized, and Scott Sailor, EdD, ATC, has been voted by the membership to be our next president. He will take office in June 2015. Our sincere thanks to Russ Richardson, EdD, ATC, for his willingness to serve the association and to all the members who engaged in the voting process. 
 

NATA’s NPI contest ‘Are You Being Counted’ is finished, and we are excited to report an additional 1,727 athletic trainers now have NPIs. Congratulations to District Four for winning the “Largest percentage of members with NPIs” category and District Three for taking the “Highest percentage increase in members with NPIs” title. We detailed the full district breakdown in a previous blog post.