Faculty Publications

Exploring The Integration Of Medicine And Sport At Macro-, Meso-, And Microlevels Of Development For High Athletic Performance And Lifelong Public Health With Reference To Practices At The University Of Northern Iowa

Document Type

Article

Keywords

Integration, Public health, Sport performance, University

Journal/Book/Conference Title

Journal of Physical Education and Sport

Volume

22

Issue

1

First Page

138

Last Page

147

Abstract

This study analyzes the progressive practices at University of Northern Iowa (UNI) against a global sport development model for high performance integrated with healthy lifelong mass participation. The model’s macro-level embraces elements of socioeconomic, cultural, legislative, and organizational support for a sport system by all possible public and private partners and stakeholders. The meso-level includes infrastructure, personnel, and services enabling sport programs, and the micro-level consists of operations, processes, and methodologies for development of individual athletes. The innovative macro-level UNI partnerships mobilized and integrated financial and human resources of private healthcare and public education systems. This includes voluntary community resources in the state of Iowa, creating a meso-level facility, event and educational infrastructures, as well as unique job positions servicing both recovering hospital patients and high performance (HP) athletes competing for Division I National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). At the micro-level, the world’s best methods of clinical rehabilitation and HP science utilize natural outdoor environments, water, gym apparatus, including mobile fitness equipment, and partner resistance for a holistic fitness program with maximum variety and efficient compounded exercises. The holistic fitness program, individualized through isokinetic testing, serves the following purpose: injury prevention; accurate determination of return to play for HP athletes and hospital patients; monitoring athlete and patient progress utilizing strength benchmarks and highlighting strength standards; accurate evaluation of strength and conditioning programming to identify best practices; and the creative integration of strength and conditioning staff and their innovations to benefit the well-being and success of athletes, hospital patients, and the community.

Department

Department of Kinesiology

Original Publication Date

1-1-2022

DOI of published version

10.7752/jpes.2022.01017

Link to Full Text

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