Medical campaigns
Article summary
We run campaigns that use the global visibility of our elite competitions to raise awareness of critical health and safety issues in the world of football.
Article top media content
Article body
CPR – Get trained, save lives
Sudden cardiac arrest is the third leading cause of death in Europe, annually affecting 1 in 1,000 people. Trained intervention can increase survival changes for cardiac arrest by two or three times.
Launched in 2023, ‘Get trained, save lives’– a joint campaign between UEFA and the European Resuscitation Council (ERC) - will make sure every second counts by teaching cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) to the football community.
"Swift and appropriate intervention can double or even triple the chances of surviving a sudden cardiac arrest and save up to 100,000 lives a year across Europe."
With the ERC, we have organised training for more than 2,700 players, coaches, referees, officials and staff involved in our finals and tournaments, with both our own and national association staff as well as UEFA EURO 2024 teams and volunteers due to follow. During the EURO in Germany, we will extend the campaign to the fan community, on site at the ten host city fan zones and online through an interactive training course featuring Ruud Gullit and player chatbots.
More on Get Trained, Save Lives
Concussion awareness
After analysing several high-level cases of concussion, in 2019, we launched a public awareness campaign to protect players from head injuries. This aims to educate players, coaches, referees and the public about concussion, as well as the need to respect team doctors’ diagnoses during matches.
Posters displayed in dressing, medical and referees' rooms helped to drive home the three R’s:
- Players should RECOGNISE a head injury in a case of collision.
- They must REPORT the injury to the referee, who may not have seen it. The referee can then stop the game and call for the team doctor.
- The team doctor will make an on-pitch assessment and decide whether the player is fit to play. If the doctor has any doubts about impaired consciousness or signs of concussion to the player's head, they should REMOVE the player from the field.
In coordination with the International Federation of Professional Footballers (FIFPRO), we also produced a video in which animated characters follow these guidelines to the letter.
"We hope that the campaign will raise greater awareness of the need to take all head injuries seriously."
Anterior cruciate ligament injuries
In 2023, we set up an expert panel specifically focused on the health of female footballers across all levels of the game, in particular, injury patterns that differ from the men’s game.
As a priority, the panel asked a group of leading experts and researchers composed of medical doctors, team physicians, physiotherapists, and former professional players to look into the greater prevalence of anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries among female footballers.
We have since launched multiple ACL injury prevention and awareness research studies and campaigns, including a questionnaire for both male and female players to understand knowledge of ACL injury prevention, a consensus statement covering best practice for injury prevention and management strategies, and supporting a research study understanding male and female players’ own stories of how and why they sustained ACL injuries.
All our projects will provide practical advice for everyone working in the game, regardless of their level of engagement.