Timeframe
2021–2025
Funding
World Rugby
New Zealand Rugby
New Zealand Rugby Foundation
COMPASS staff
Stephanie D’Souza
Barry Milne
Chao Li
Collaborators
University of Auckland
Thomas Lumley
Susan Morton
New Zealand Rugby
Ken Quarrie
Description
This work was conducted in collaboration with New Zealand Rugby, to investigate long-term health and social outcomes associated with playing professional rugby union, e.g. mortality, neurodegenerative disease, cardiovascular disease, and mental disorders. We linked anonymised rugby player data to StatsNZ’s Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI) and used a novel case-control design to match those players to demographically similar males in the population.
This project was the first of its kind in using nationwide administrative data to explore longitudinal health outcomes in rugby players, giving both New Zealand Rugby and World Rugby some important evidence of the long-term risks involved in the sport, and their severity.