After a quarter century, the largest collegiate sports injury database anywhere is evolving into something even bigger while retaining its role as a vital resource for NCAA member schools.

The recently created Datalys Center – a national nonprofit research center formed by the Association and partner organizations in the fields of biosciences and sports medicine – will build on the NCAA’s Injury Surveillance System in what Executive Director Troy Hege says will be the “leading sports injury research, data collection and translation center in the world.”

The NCAA will partner with BioCrossroads (an initiative to support the life sciences industry in Indiana) and the American College of Sports Medicine in sponsoring the center’s mission of providing sports injury information to academic researchers, sports governing organizations and the broader sports medicine community.

“The data and its translation is the foundation for the development of programs, policies, rules and education aimed at preventing, mitigating and treating sports injuries more effectively,” says Hege. “In addition, the center will be an educational vehicle for sports and exercise medicine and health promotion.”

The center will have at its core injury data collected during the past 25 years through the Injury Surveillance System – information that has helped NCAA committees enact safety-focused rules modifications in sports such as football and women’s lacrosse.

Last summer, in a nod to the volunteer efforts of certified athletic trainers at NCAA institutions who report injuries to the surveillance program, the Journal of Athletic Training published analyses of ISS data and offered recommendations that the special issue’s editors said “can make collegiate sports even safer.”

That special issue – which one of its editors, longtime ISS coordinator Randall Dick, says took more than two years to complete “and is the largest collection of athletic injury data ever published” – also offered a taste of the type of contribution to injury prevention the Datalys Center could provide for a broader audience.

“By seeding the Datalys Center with some of our tools and injury surveillance capabilities, these resources now will be available to a much broader community,” says Robert Vowels, NCAA vice president of educational services. “In addition, this access and the development of new research services and capabilities will advance our own health and safety efforts in collegiate athletics.”

Even as it serves that broader community, the center’s injury surveillance program still directly will benefit the NCAA member schools that have supported the effort from the beginning.

“The ISS will continue to monitor injury rates of intercollegiate sports, serving as a resource to the NCAA and its member colleges and universities by supporting sports injury surveillance and research needs,” says David Klossner, NCAA director of health and safety. “The NCAA’s relationship with the center also will allow the Association to partner with and benefit from the efforts of a growing number of organizations interested in and conducting sports injury surveillance and research.”

ISS researcher Randall Dick discusses last year’s special issue of the Journal of Athletic Training. / Marcia Stubbeman, NCAA.