Connectivity - Contributions from the Network #3 - Andreas Bjerregaard

Today's post comes from Andreas Bjerregaard who is a physiotherapist and personal trainer in Copenhagen.  As well as running his own clinic and being a FIFA 11+ instructor, Andreas volunteers his physio skills for the Homeless World Cup.  Andreas blogs about his work here.

I work on how people can change the lives of homeless people through football. Right now the tournament (www.homelessworldcup.org) is being hosted in Santiago, Chile.
  I am part of a physiotherapy team from Denmark and Norway who are treating players from all over the world.  On busy day we would have 150-200 treatments with all kinds of injuries: dislocated fingers and shoulders, broken bones, major acute ligaments and muscle ruptures, minor muscle and ligaments sprains and strains, burns and scrapes, dehydration, anxiety attacks, muscle soreness, prophylactic treatments, and counseling for suicidal thoughts. 

We use a football as the mediating technology for the more than 1,000 participants at the games, and that helps them to engage meaningfully in the world, communicate, remain active, have fun, relax and live otherwise normal lives.

I've written about my experiences at the World Cup here.

In society today there is an increased attention on how to construct health interventions for marginalised groups in a profitable way.  Many of these health interventions can benefit from a physiotherapeutic approach both in medical and social contexts.  The problem with setting up these two models against one another, is that medical excludes psychological, environmental and social factors and social factors excludes biomechanical factors.