The University of Melbourne is currently recruiting participants for a study assessing
athletic footwear for reducing knee load in girls and women. The study is conducted
by Associate Professor Adam Bryant ( Centre  for  Health,  Exercise  and  Sports
Medicine,  Department  of Physiotherapy, The University of Melbourne).

All volunteers will be given a FREE pair of Asics shoes in return for participation.

Volunteers will be required to attend one session in the movement laboratory at the
University of Melbourne.
 
To take part volunteers must:
• Be a female in late/ post-pubertal development (aged approx. 17-25 years)
• Play competitive netball (any level)
• Have a healthy weight (BMI <30 kg/m^2)
• Not have any previous lower limb surgery and or/current medical condition that
       prevents normal walking, running, jumping or hopping.
• Other exclusion criteria apply

The  Anterior  Cruciate  Ligament (ACL)  is  an   important   ligament within the knee
joint   that helps  stabilise  the knee  during  running,  walking,   jumping and landing.
This    ligament  can injure  when the knee  moves inwards in a  ‘knock-knee’ posture.
As  girls  reach  puberty,  they  become  less  able to control  the movement  patterns  
of   their  knees  and  lower  limbs - particularly  in high-demand  tasks  like   jumping.  
Compared  to boys,   girls  have 4-6  times  greater chance  of  injuring  this  ligament.

The  aim of this research  is to develop a novel athletic shoe  that can reduce harmful
knee loads during sport in adolescent girls & young women. Better-designed footwear
for  this  cohort  may   decrease  the  likelihood  of  musculoskeletal   injury & improve
physical  activity  participation  rates. Our  findings  will  lead to  the  development  of
a  new   ASICS  shoe  (phase 1)   that  will  be  “field-tested” (phase 2) during sporting
activity with high ACL injury risk (netball) to evaluate its effect on tibial shock (in-field
surrogate  measure of  knee  load) & player comfort compared to a conventional shoe.

This  research  has  been  approved by  the  School of Health  Sciences  Human Ethics
Advisory Group.

For the completed plain language statement, you may rerfer to the document below;

https://tinyurl.com/PLAIN-LANGUAGE-STATEMENT

Stella McNamara - Research Assistant (School of Health Sciences)
stella.mcnamara@unimelb.edu.au
0425-708-512