Grant: CIHR Fellowship

North America has the highest rates of osteoarthritis (OA) in the world. OA is a joint disease that causes pain, physical disability, and reduced quality of life. By 2040, 25% of Canadians will have OA. This number will be as high as 50% for those who hurt their knee playing youth sport. Currently, the treatment of youth sport knee injuries focuses on the initial injury and return to sport. Few patients receive follow-up or care beyond their injury, and despite being a priority for patients, limited effort is made to prevent OA. Stop OsteoARthritis (SOAR) is a novel online physiotherapy guided program that aims to reduce the risk of OA after a youth sport knee injury. Designed with a team of patients, clinicians and researchers, SOAR teaches active youth how to self-manage their OA risk, and improve knee muscle strength and physical activity levels. SOAR consists of a knee education camp, personalized exercises, wrist-worn activity-tracker and weekly counselling. This research will assess the experiences of youth with a sport knee injury while participating in the SOAR program and how well SOAR works to reduce muscle weakness and inactivity - proven risk factors for knee OA. We will also develop a plan to assess how well SOAR works in the real world. The SOAR team will continue to include patient and clinician partners to make sure that SOAR is practical and relevant. To date, no other research group has taken this unique 'patient-orientated' approach to tackling the problem of OA. This research represents a critical step toward the goal of reducing the long-term consequences of youth sport knee injuries and will deliver an intervention that is capable of improving the health and reducing the risk of OA for the ~2 million young Canadians who have a sport knee injury annually.