Emory University in Atlanta has announced a $4.5 million grant from the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation to establish a virtual reality sports program to research youth athlete injuries and recovery.

The grant was awarded to the Emory Sports Performance and Research Center (SPARC) to establish the Georgia Initiative for Virtual Reality, Education and Sport (GIVES) program. The VR technology will help youth and high school athletes train effectively for their sports and learn to play safely, while data collected through the platform will inform targeted treatments after injury and to support safer return-to-play decision making.

The Blank Family Foundation will subsidize start-up and equipment costs. Emory SPARC research staff and outreach teams will develop and deploy the GIVES program. Physical education teachers, administrators, coaches, and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) facilitators will support the program’s implementation with the involvement of work-based learning students who will engage with existing high school curricula and sports programs.

“As leaders in discovering new methods for injury prevention and school outreach care for athletes we are committed to helping youth throughout Georgia achieve their best ability in sports,” said Scott D. Boden, chair of the Emory University School of Medicine’s department of orthopedics and chief strategy officer for Emory Healthcare. “This starts with improving availability of knowledge gained from injury prevention research. We are most excited with this program’s potential to uniquely engage school districts that are underserved and have limited access to these types of technologies or resources.”

(Photo credit: Getty Images/Fabio Balbi)