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The purpose of this article is to explore how social forces related to the corporatization of universities play out at the granular level of institutional mission and vision statements in the racialized context of Canadian Kinesiology. The stated aims of Canadian Kinesiology academic units (N = 36) were collected from their public-facing websites, and we conducted a critical discourses analysis of our evidence. We argue that mission and vision statements construct Kinesiology as an altruistic and impactful scholarly project and conceal the contested nature of health, scientific knowledge, and community engagement in the field. Careful analysis of the data, with particular attention paid to that which is unspoken, silenced or erased, highlights how these guiding declarations can renew the field's underlying racial and colonial logics. To conclude, we note instances when programs use institutional statements to unsettle dominant scripts and open possibilities to work toward a more progressive and just Kinesiology.

Introduction: Initially developed by New Zealand Rugby in 2014, the Blue Card initiative in rugby enables match officials to remove athletes from play if they are suspected to have sustained a concussion. Considerable attention has been paid by sport and health advocates to the possibilities and limitations of this initiative in safeguarding athlete health. However, little if any attention has been paid to the well-being of those responsible for administering the Blue Card (i.e., match officials). The aim of this paper was to examine match officials’ experiences with and perspectives on implementing the Blue Card initiative in Ontario, Canada, with focused attention on the tensions around their ability to manage games and participants (e.g., athletes, coaches) while attempting to safeguard athlete well-being. Methods: Using Relational Coordination Theory (RCT) as a guiding framework and qualitative research method, we highlight the rich accounts of 19 match officials’ perspectives and experiences regarding sport-related concussion (SRC) management and the Blue Card protocol. Results: Four themes were derived from the data, reflecting latent assumptions embedded within the concussion management process, which include: assumptions of trust, respect, and cooperation; assumptions of shared responsibility; assumptions of shared understanding; and assumptions of harassment-free sport. Discussion: Our findings emphasize the need to attend to social relations in concussion management and provide insight into match officials’ fraught experiences on the frontlines of concussion management. We identify factors affecting match official well-being and provide considerations for concussion management initiatives designed to improve athlete safety, such as the Blue Card. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract. Researchers are increasingly examining the tenuous relationship between participation in high performance sport and health, and yet IOC-sanctioned and popular discourse around the Olympics remains replete with references to [...]

Socio-cultural research on athlete maltreatment is well documented, with much work focused on examining the spectrum of mistreatment and programmatic/policy responses. While some sport governing bodies have implemented a 'duty of care' approach, more definitional analyses of care and caring in competitive youth sport remain absent. This gap served as point of departure for an institutional ethnographic study designed to examine practices of care and caring within the context of youth competitive volleyball through a socio-philosophical lens. Informed by the philosophical frameworks espoused in the Ethics of Care and the Ethics of Need, this paper utilises textual and interview data from the larger study to examine how athletes, coaches, and parents interpret and practice care in relationship to notions of care established in the sport organisation's governing policies. The results showed how, at the institutional level, notions of care expressed in the sport organisation's governing documents focused more so on identifying and preventing uncaring practices rather than illuminating what constitutes care and caring, while participants negotiated and interpreted their lived experiences of care as the prioritisation of the needs of athletes over the performance imperative. This was particularly true for coaches who were dually tasked with the care-taking of youth athletes on their teams, whilst also ensuring performance success on the playing field. Thus, coaches are responsible for practices of care in situ that are not fulsomely addressed in governing policies, which presents challenges for coaches when balancing athletes' needs while also adhering to the aims of competitive sport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While research and scholarship on the dynamic interconnections between sport and health has steadily grown in the sociocultural study of sport in the past few decades, this paper focuses more directly on the politics of health within sport. Drawing on a small study of the lived experiences and understandings of health, pain/injury, risk and precaution among 12 male and female high performance youth (16-19 years of age) triathletes and three coaches, we outline the ways in which health becomes depoliticized among high performance athletes as our participants made no connection to health as a political phenomenon—within or outside of sport—or to their own right to health as members of the high performance sport community. We conclude by offering some suggestions as to why health was (and is) rendered apolitical in high performance youth triathlon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy scholars, both within and outside of sport, have pointed to trends that emphasise neoliberal and free market orientations within public sector organisations. Given such developments, this paper utilises New Public Management (NPM) and Public Entrepreneurship (PE) to explore the Canadian Sport Policy (CSP). Thematic analysis was employed to compare and analyse the 2002 and 2012 CSP documents and other related CSP texts. Study findings demonstrate that while the CSP has expanded in scope since 2002 to 2012 to be more inclusive of both elite athlete development and sport participation for all, including heightened attention to facilitating sporting opportunities for traditionally underrepresented groups, there has also been intensified adoption of NPM approaches and a turn to promoting PE within Canadian sport policy. The NPM and PE ethos encourages innovation, new ideas, and the broadening of the sport sector in Canada; however, and as raised in the discussion, there are also some troubling implications related to the reproduction of inequality and the NPM and PE emphasis in Canadian sport policy that warrant further critical discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This case study examines the relationship between the "culture of risk" and the negotiation of treatment between sport medicine clinicians and student-athletes at a large Canadian university. The evidence acknowledges that a "culture of risk" was reinforced under certain circumstances during negotiation, but was also tempered by the existence of a "culture of precaution" that worked to resist those influences. The dialectic between the cultures of risk and precaution reveals some of the tensions inherent in negotiations between clinicians and patient-athletes, and helps to complicate the notion of a "culture of risk." Another aspect (one that has rarely if ever been examined) of the negotiation of treatment is also considered in the promotion of "sensible risks" by clinicians to injured athletes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within mainstream cancer literature, policy documents, and clinical practice, "work" is typically characterized as being synonymous with paid employment, and the problem of work is situated within the "return to work" discourse. The work that patients perform in managing their health, care, and everyday life at times of illness, however, is largely overlooked and unsupported. Drawing on feminist political economy theory, we report on a qualitative study of 12 women living with cancer. Major findings show that the work of patienthood cut across multiple fields of practice and included both paid and unpaid labor. The most prevalent types of work included illness work, body work, identity work, everyday work, paid employment and/or the work of maintaining income, and coordination work. The findings of this study disrupt popular conceptualizations of work and illuminate the nuanced and often invisible work that cancer patients may encounter, and the health consequences and inequities therein. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the importance of volunteerism to Canadian sport, and the need for research to understand the characteristics of sport volunteerism, a pilot study was carried out to explore the experiences of volunteers in sport. The study focused on two different sport associations (one individual sport and one team sport) in two majority linguistic localities (one predominantly francophone in Quebec and one predominantly anglophone in Ontario). Language is a key element of community membership, and this article pays specific attention to the relationship between language and sport volunteensm in Canada. The results indicate that there are some different patterns of sport volunteering between the two different (official) linguistic communities, and suggest that the experiences of Canadian sport volunteers in relation to linguistic community membership have implications for the recruitment, training, and retention of volunteers in sport, and warrant further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a combination of archival research and semi-structured in-depth interviews, this study outlines the early development of sport medicine in Canada, from the mid-1950s to the late 1970s, in relation to the development of Canadian high performance sport during this period of time. I argue that the early development of sport medicine in Canada dovetailed with and benefited from the broader professionalization and rationalization of high performance sport, and that transformations in the production of international and national sport after the Second World War laid the foundation for the formalized and institutionalized entity we recognize today as sport medicine. These transformations were underpinned by the ideological re-centering of international high performance (specifically Olympic) sport from a moral and educational initiative to the all-out pursuit of sporting excellence that, in turn, was attentive to the claims of expertise from nascent sport medicine practitioners. The development of sport medicine is outlined from the late 1950s to the incorporation of the Sport Medicine Council of Canada (SMCC; later known as the Sport Medicine and Science Council of Canada, SMSCC) in 1978, and particular attention is paid to two turning points in the growth of sport medicine in Canada following initiatives to locate sport medicine in Canadian health and sport circles prior to the 1968 Mexico City Olympic Games: a) the negative experiences of the Canadian contingent at the 1968 Games in contrast to; b) the provision and delivery of sport medicine at and following the 1976 Montréal Olympic Games. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

The process of admission of, typically, older residents into long-term care (LTC) has been greatly examined from the perspectives of the residents and their family members/caregivers. However, the viewpoint of the administrative staff directly involved has been left relatively unexamined. This article highlights findings from a qualitative study focused on exploring the lived experiences of LTC administrative staff working with residents-to-be and families/caregivers during the admissions process. Data from semi-structured interviews with seven participants indicate that these individuals often take on roles/tasks that go beyond the scope of their official work descriptions. Participants acknowledged the heavy toll of the stressful nature of their work on their health/well-being, but often normalized the pressures as part of their professional, if not personal, responsibilities to help others. Recommendations on improving the admissions process highlighted the lack of critique of the LTC system, despite its responsibility for the challenges that shape their day-to-day work.

People of South-Asian origin have an increased prevalence of coronary artery disease. Although cardiac rehabilitation (CR) is effective, South Asians are among the least likely people to participate in these programs. Automatic referral increases CR use and may reduce access inequalities. This study qualitatively explored whether CR referral knowledge and access varied among South-Asian patients. Participants were South-Asian cardiac patients receiving treatment at hospitals in Ontario, Canada. Each hospital refers to CR via one offour methods: automatically through paper or electronically, through discussion with allied health professionals (liaison referral), or through referral at the physician's discretion. Data were collected via interviews and analyzed using interpretive-descriptive analysis. Four themes emerged: the importance of predischarge CR discussions with healthcare providers, limited knowledge of CR, ease of the referral process for facilitators of CR attendance, and participants'needs for personal autonomy regarding their decision to attend CR. Liaison referral was perceived to be the most suitable referral method for participants. It facilitated communication between patients and providers, ensuring improved understanding of CR. Automatic referral may not be as well suited to this population because of reduced patient-provider communication.