West Ham United’s Club Doctor Richard Weiler has published a research study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine (BSJM), which is the first of its kind to be made fully accessible to people with visual impairment by also being released in an audio format.
As the study explored the perceptions and experiences of English blind footballers on concussion, Dr Weiler felt it was important that the end users with visual impairment could also access the study and was delighted when the BSJM accepted this request to make the study full accessible.
Peter Drury, a football commentator with over 30 years of experience behind the microphone with the BBC, ITV and Premier League Productions, kindly agreed to reading the study and this can be heard through the following link: on.soundcloud.com/XQb2T
West Ham United’s Club Doctor of over ten years, Dr Weiler is a widely respected and influential Consultant Physician in Sport, Exercise and Musculoskeletal Medicine who has worked at the FIFA World Cup finals, Olympic and Paralympic Summer and Winter Games.
Dr Weiler has spent 17 years supporting Para Football and Para Sport and has recently submitted his PhD thesis to University Medical Centres Amsterdam, part of Vrije Universiteit, trying to improve concussion care for para athletes.
This work took him as a Paralympics GB Medical Officer for GB Blind and Cerebral Palsy football teams at the Paralympics in London 2012, and in 2014 and he was a Sports Medicine Lead at the first Invictus Games at the Olympic Park for injured servicemen and servicewomen.
He said “I have always found working with para athletes extremely rewarding and it has helped me think in greater depth about clinical care in sports medicine. I encountered problems many years ago knowing how to assess and care for para footballers with suspected concussions and always dreamt that I might be able to make a difference in this important and previously neglected area.
“I am grateful to my friends, supervisors and mentors Professors Evert Verhagen, Willem van Mechelen and Dr Osman Hassan Ahmed for supporting and advising me over the years with this work. I would not have been able to achieve much at all without their help and the help of my co-authors.
“It was also great to have Evert and co-author Dr Caroline Bolling supporting the Hammers, when watching their first live game of Premier League football at the London Stadium a few weeks ago.”
As part of this work, Dr Weiler and Dr Ahmed helped introduce temporary concussion substitutions into the rules of visually impaired and cerebral palsy football several years ago, which are different formats of adapted football played with fewer players, different rules, smaller pitches and different athlete needs. These concussion rule changes were implemented in the delayed 2020 Tokyo Paralympics.
To reach his research study, click here.
You can also listen to Dr Weiler’s podcast on the topic here.