A sustainable structure for jockey injury data management for the North American horse racing industry

•North American flat racing lacks comprehensive collection, collation, and analysis of jockey fall and injury data.•We present a proposed architecture for jockey injury data using existing infrastructure, and implementation in two phases.•Phase 1 - existing Equine Injury Database (EID) and Equibase capabilities that enables simplified flagging of racing incidents.•Phase 2 – enhancing the Jockey Injury Database’s ability to track rider history absent an EID or Equibase flag.•A regulatory mandate will be the key to ensuring the structure of jockey injury data management is sustainable. Jockey injuries in North American racing are not well understood. The types and severity of injuries as well as exposure need to be better characterized in order to reduce risk. We consider existing data sources and the opportunity to combine this data with a new data collection effort to better understand and potentially reduce risk to riders. Using a two-phase approach, data appears to be available which would allow useful information on jockey injuries that could inform efforts for risk reduction quickly and with modest resources. Initial successes can help to develop support for a more comprehensive data collection and risk reduction program.