Ski-helmet crusader is getting results

JEFFERSONVILLE, Vt. — Dr. Robert Williams doesn't have to rely on his medical knowledge when it comes to urging skiers and snowboarders to wear helmets. He has firsthand experience.

Williams crashed on his mountain bike six years ago and suffered internal injuries, but his head wasn't hurt because he was wearing a helmet. That got him thinking about another favorite sport and how many head injuries could be prevented if more skiers wore helmets.

Now, the pediatric anesthesiologist and avid skier is crusading to persuade more people on the slopes to buckle up — their chin straps, that is.

As a critical care specialist at Vermont's Children's Hospital at Fletcher Allen Health Care and medical adviser to the ski patrol at Smugglers' Notch, he's seen a lot of head injuries and read the research.

If skiers and snowboarders wore helmets, 7,700 head injuries — 44 percent of those that occur nationally — could be prevented or reduced in severity each year, according to a 1999 U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission report.

"The medical literature is very clear on this, helmets are an effective deterrent strategy," said Williams, who is also an associate professor at the University of Vermont's College of Medicine.

So the 52-year-old and his organization, the Vermont Snow Sports Research Team — a collaboration between the UVM College of Medicine and Vermont's Children's Hospital — set out six years ago to promote helmet use at Smugglers' Notch.

"If we can prove in a pilot resort how high we can get the helmet use rates, then we could estimate, say if we got to 90 percent, we could estimate if everybody adopted that program nationally the thousands and thousands of head injuries that we could prevent," Williams said.

They counted the number of helmet wearers in lift lines, handed out information and cool stickers and raffled off free helmets for kids.

Posters reading "ski like a local, wear a helmet" adorn the walls of the ski lodges, ski patrollers and instructors are encouraged to wear helmets as role models, and the resort replaced photographs on its Web site and in its literature with helmet wearing skiers and riders.

Six years later, the results are visible.

Now 90 percent of children at Smugglers' Notch wear helmets, up from 60 percent in the winter of 2002-03, according to the team.

Seventy percent of adults targeted at Smugglers now wear helmets, up from 30 percent six years ago. The numbers are based on more than 75,000 observations over six years, Williams said.