By identifying, evaluating and advancing the most promising ideas, Novus Sport is driving the development of industry-leading initiatives:

Anti-doping Testing Services
Sports Injury Database
Health management for an aging population

Anti-doping Testing Services
Elite athletes and steroid abuse. The issue continues to make national headlines. In baseball. In football. In cycling. In the Olympics. The abuse is widely reported and debated.

Unfortunately, the problem isn’t isolated to elite athletes. A 2003 survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reveals that steroid use among high school students more than doubled from 1991 to 2003. This means an alarming number of high school athletes are risking deadly consequences for the sake of a competitive edge.

Motivated in part by this trend, Novus Sport is pursing as its first major project the development of products and services to enhance high school and college drug testing programs. The goal: to increase a high school or college program’s ability to test for the use of steroids and other drugs.

According to a survey conducted by the National Federation of State High School Associations, only four percent of those high schools surveyed have drug testing programs for steroids. While a much larger percentage of schools test for alcohol or other drug abuse, budget constraints prevent most from including steroid testing – it’s simply too costly to administer tests to pinpoint steroid use. In addition, schools lack accepted standards for drug testing program design and management.

Novus Sport, the National Center for Drug Free Sport and the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) are partnering with other organizations to explore cost-effective testing programs that will help high schools and colleges spot steroid abuse among student athletes.

Novus Sport and its partners hope that by providing recognized guidelines for drug testing programs and offering the tools necessary to perform tests for a wide variety of drugs, they can help protect school athletes from harmful drugs – and also protect school athletic programs from the broader effects of student drug use.

Sports Injury Database
Football has long been associated with the largest number of injuries in high school and college athletics. But recent improvements in sports-injury data have spurred the development of innovations, training techniques and policies that have decreased the number of football injuries.

That’s specifically why Novus Sport has partnered with the American College of Sports Medicine and other organizations to explore the possibility of expanding and formalizing a national sports injury database. The database would serve as a national resource for the collection, storage and analysis of sports injury data to support academic research and advance sports medicine, performance, health, safety and rehabilitation.

The result: more valuable information for researchers, clinicians, coaches and officials to improve sports health and performance.

Health management for an aging population

People are living longer, but not necessarily better – as people age, they’re more likely to suffer from any number of age related chronic diseases and disabilities, which include obesity, cardiovascular disease, arthritis, diabetes, Alzheimer's, osteoporosis, stroke, depression and cancer.  As one ages the likelihood of having a chronic disease or disability increases:

• 88% of those over 65 have at least one chronic condition
• 21% of those over 65 have chronic disabilities
• The average 75 year old has three chronic conditions and uses five prescription drugs
  

A strong body of scientific evidence shows that physical activity can prevent or mitigate age related chronic diseases and extend years of independent living, reduce disability and improve the quality of life.  Furthermore, preventing or mitigating age related chronic diseases through physical activity could save billions in health care costs. According to data from 1987 National Medical Expenditures Survey, inactive women 45-54 years of age had double the health care costs of their active counterparts.

At a cellular level, the muscle atrophy and deterioration that occurs in NASA astronauts is similar and in many ways identical to the muscle atrophy and deterioration that occurs in an aging population. Based on this observation, Ball State’s Human Performance Lab has been leveraging their NASA funded research to design exercise and fitness protocols for the aging.  In addition, they have been testing their protocols and advancing their knowledge of health and fitness for the aging through a small program that is run through the Human Performance Lab.

Novus Sport is working with Ball State University’s Human Performance Lab on developing a commercial model for advancing health and fitness targeted at an aging (50+) population.