Premises and pitfalls of athletic injury surveillance

to the needs of rules committees, medical practitioners, institutions, sporting goods manufacturers, and researchers. Because of pending legislation at that time mandating a national study of the athletic injury problem in schools and colleges, and the ongoing but sometimes less than cautious activities of the Consumer Product Safety Commission in this regard, and other media and litigational attempts to depict athletic injury problems, this meeting was of more than academic significance. The purpose of this paper is to reconstruct the essence of the consensus reached at that meeting and to evaluate (1) the premises upon which NAIRS was founded and (2) the pitfalls adhering to this endeavor.