NOPS 2010 –2012, Promotion of workability and functional capability among young people in vocational colleges : Sport injury prevention leaflet

The objective of this thesis was to prevent sport injuries by using health communications, as in this case a leaflet. The target audience of this thesis is students of vocational colleges between the ages of 15 and 18. The leaflet was produced as a part of the project NOPS 2010 –2012, Promotion of workability and functional capability among young people in vocational colleges. The main target of this project was to develop a model of operations where health care and social services students in university of applied sciences hooked up as part of health promoting action in vocational colleges. The aim of this project is to promote adolescent’s healthy lifestyles as well as safe and healthy way of working. Background of the thesis was based on different methods and theories about sport injury prevention, such as adolescent’s lifestyles, the main features of adolescent’s development, and the impact of environment on sport injuries.

The leaflet was produced as action research. Theme interviews with the representatives of the target group and the specialist were a developing method in the process of producing the leaflet. The specialist interviews were held as individual interviews and the interview with the target group representatives as a group interview. The purpose of the interviews was to collect information on good features of sport injury leaflet. The results of the interviews were consistent with each other; the content of a leaflet needs to be understandable, the appearance needs to be appealing and there should not be too much text in a good leaflet. After interviews a sketch was made and sent for evaluation to the specialist and the target group representatives. The feedback of the leaflet sketch was conducted through e-mail and the leaflet was completed.

The finished leaflet has common information of sport injuries and the prevention of sport injuries. The leaflet is available to anyone on the internet page of NOPS –project of the Laurea Hyvinkää, The University of Applied Sciences. The purpose is that also others than just the target group can benefit from the leaflet. A challenge was to create a professional leaflet which would interest young people. Sport injuries is a wide theme to discuss but the available information is limited, so a future challenge is to increase the amount of the information about sport injuries and provide that information to those it may affect.