Dissemination of Sports Club for Health guidelines in Europe:a survey-based evaluation

Abstract

<p>In the past 15 years, a wide range of activities have been undertaken to disseminate the Sports Club for Health (SCforH) guidelines. To evaluate the outcomes of the dissemination efforts that had been made until 2016, a Europe-wide survey was conducted as part of the SCforH 2015-17 project. Given that the evaluation was done more than five years ago and that a range of SCforH dissemination activities have taken place since then, we conducted a new SCforH survey as part of the SCforH 2020-22 project. We sent direct email invitations to participate in the survey to a total of: [i] 2,646 representatives of sports associations; [ii] 323 public health researchers and promoters; [iii] 327 policymakers; and [iv] 513 higher education teachers in the areas of physical education, sports science, and health promotion from 27 European Union member states, candidate countries for European Union membership (Albania, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, and Türkiye), Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. We also encouraged them to forward the invitation to their colleagues and member organisations. A total of 705 stakeholders in the European sports sector agreed to participate in the survey. We found that commitment of national governments in European countries to the promotion of health-enhancing physical activity is relatively low compared to their commitment to elite sports. For 87.1% of the European countries included in the analysis, stakeholders in the sports sector reported that some initiatives have been taken to promote the use or implementation of the SCforH guidelines. Fifty-three percent of representatives of the sports associations in our study sample were aware of the SCforH guidelines, which suggests an increase of 31 percentage points since the SCforH 2016/17 survey. For most European countries, we found that less than 10% of their sports clubs are aware and use SCforH guidelines. Future SCforH projects should aim to increase the awareness and knowledge of policymakers about the importance of promoting ‘sport-for-all’. The awareness of SCforH guidelines among the representatives of sports associations is relatively high, but it should be further increased, as this may help increase the relatively low commitment of sports clubs to the promotion of health-enhancing physical activity. Our findings demonstrate a need for new SCforH projects aiming to promote the use of SCforH guidelines in Europe.<br></p>