Use of PROMIS and Functional Movement System (FMS) Testing to Evaluate the Effects of Athletic Performance and Injury Prevention Training in Female High School Athletes

Two major health concerns with female high school athletes are: 1) psychosocial wellness, and 2) sports-related injuries. It is also known that these health concerns are much greater for minority students who attend high school in economically depressed cities. While it has been well-established that exercise is an effective intervention for these health concerns, there are no established outcome measures to quantitatively assess athletic performance and injury prevention training interventions in this population. Previously, we have demonstrated the utility of Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) as a robust outcome measure following ACL reconstruction. Functional Movement Screening (FMS) has been used as a tool to determine injury risk in female collegiate athletes. Since these tools are broadly available, we completed a research study of urban underrepresented minority and suburban female high school athletes, to assess the feasibility and utility of these tools to measure changes in this population during 10-weeks of athletic training. No adverse events of the training or study were reported. A Kaplan-Meier assessment of the data revealed that there was high student retention throughout the 10 weeks. In addition, we found no difference in weekly attendance between the students that completed the intervention vs. the dropouts (while they were in the program), indicating that the students were highly motivated to attend when possible. While no significant differences were found for fatigue and physical function, the intervention significantly improved anxiety, peer relationships, pain interference, and trended towards significance for depression (p<0.05). In terms of physical performance, bench press, combined Pro Agility, and total FMS were all significantly improved (p<0.05). Surprisingly, there were 10 students (67%) in peril of sports- related injury (FM˂14) at the start of the intervention, and all but 1 (90%) eliminated this serious risk factor. Collectively, these results demonstrate the feasibility of PROMIS and FMS outcomes to assess the efficacy of physical training interventions, in underrepresented minority female high school students, which warrants investigation in a formal prospective study.