Masters Football and Cardiovascular Risk Reduction Study: The impact of an educational program on cardiac health awareness in amateur football players aged 35 years and over.

The intervention will be an educational program to improve cardiac health awareness. At the commencement of the study, all participants will be asked to complete an online self-administered questionnaire. The questionnaire will take approximately 15-20 minutes to complete. Participants will then be randomly allocated to one of two groups, the intervention group (Group A) or the control group (Group B). The intervention group (half of the participants) will be asked to access and complete an online educational program (the study intervention). The program can be completed at their own pace, and all up should take between 45 mins – 60 mins to complete. Participants can access the content at any time, from a location and at a time convenient to them. They will be prompted to review the program on a second occasion one month later. The educational program will incorporate 5 key video-based modules: (i) Heart Disease basics, terminology and risk factors (ii) Symptom recognition and response - knowledge, attitudes, beliefs of myocardial infarction (MI), and of warning symptoms (iii) Instruction on CPR, and Defibrillator use and access (iv) Case scenarios – learning from case stories of players with heart disease (v) Understanding of cardiac testing – a discussion of which tests are available The video-based modules include educational video lectures, along with written content and short quizzes to reinforce the content within each module. Each module should take participants around 8-12 minutes to complete. The educational program has been developed specifically for the this study, with lessons incorporating content from known guidelines and sources including The National Heart Foundation of Australia and The Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute. Adherence to the intervention (completion of the online educational program) will be recorded and monitored within the Kajabi platform. Kajabi Website Analytics will be used to track individual learner progress, enabling the Study Coordinator to monitor participant progress in individual lessons and modules, overall completion of course (as a percentage score of total number of lessons), number of logins, start date and last activity date. If a participant in Group A has not commenced the educational program within two weeks of enrolment, a reminder using their preferred contact method (text or email) will be sent. If a participant in Group A has not completed the educational program within one month of enrolment, a reminder using their preferred contact method (text or email) will be sent. If, after prompting, they don’t complete the educational program, we will note this in our results.