I’ve played baseball and football for years, and for almost two years I coached kids at the West Orange Recreational Center. So sports injuries are something I’ve seen from a lot of angles. But I never thought of them as a public health issue until recently.

Here’s the stat that changed my mind. According to the CDC, more than half of youth sports injuries are preventable, and there are around 8.5 million sports-related medical visits in the U.S. every year. More than half. That means with the right training, warm-ups, rest, and coaching, we could avoid a huge number of these injuries.

The part that bothers me is that injury prevention isn’t equal. The kids I coached came from communities that didn’t always have the resources other programs had. Good coaching, proper equipment, and injury prevention training cost money, and a lot of programs in under-resourced areas just don’t have it. So the kids who can least afford a serious injury are sometimes the most likely to get one.

There’s also a longer-term cost. When a kid gets hurt and can’t afford treatment, the injury can stick with them. And if a kid quits sports because of an injury, they lose all the health benefits of being active, which raises the risk of other problems down the road.

This is actually the idea behind a program me and my brother have been building called Play to Prevent. The basic thinking is that sports can be a tool for prevention, not just something that causes injuries. Coaches who know how to prevent injuries, keep kids active, and teach healthy habits early are doing public health work, even if nobody calls it that.

I love sports, and I want kids to keep playing. But keeping them safe and keeping the field level for everyone is part of that.