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PlaySafe is an outeach program of the UCSF Sports Medicine Center to provide care for student-athletes in the high schools of the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD). Until this program began in 2001, San Francisco high schools — including all eight schools that have interscholastic football — did not have a team doctor or athletic trainer.

With PlaySafe, the public high schools have access to UCSF Sports Medicine Center experts. Doctors from the center perform pre-season physical exams and help monitor the athletes throughout the season. The UCSF center also sponsors the visits of athletic trainers.

These experts are qualified to determine when an athlete should play or be withheld from competition. Before this program, paramedics were available during games but there was no continuity of care.

The outreach program was initiated by the UCSF experts after media coverage of serious injuries and the deaths of young athletes, including one at a San Francisco high school, that could have been prevented with appropriate medical care.

For more information about the PlaySafe program and Saturday morning clinics, call the UCSF Sports Medicine Center at (415) 885-3819.