Supplemental material for Dance HALO project

The Health of Adults Longitudinal Observational study seeks to understand the impact of environmental, structural, and psychological factors pertaining to safe practices and decision-making prior to injury in dancers.
A self-report survey was developed based upon the original HALO questionnaire of demographic, lifestyle, physical activity, overall health, and injury history variables. This was supplemented with dance-specific questions pertaining to primary dance style, training floor, career stage, and more. A snowball distribution method was employed, recruiting dancers via professional companies, schools, and social media.
448 dancers responded to the survey (35% response rate); the majority were females from contemporary and ballet genres. Three-quarters reported injury impacted their daily lives with an incidence rate of 1.8 injuries/year and 6 injuries across their careers, the spine, hip, knee or ankle being the most reported sites. 22% of participants reported having OA, 5% of these had a physician confirmed diagnosis, with a mean age of diagnosis of 38 years. Former professional dancers had 3.2x increased risk of OA than other participants in this study and current dance teachers had 1.8x risk. Participants reported significant workplace stress, including high expectations, body image, finances and work/life balance and hesitance to report injuries.