Provide SCforH initiatives
- It will help you identify the health-enhancing qualities of your existing sport activities.
- It will serve the member clubs’ needs, by taking an innovative approach toward health promotion.
- It will increase participation levels amongst high-need/hard-to-reach population groups.
- It will help you to fulfil partnership agreements with various stakeholders, including funders.
- It will add value to your existing services.
- Identify existing activities that support SCforH principles and develop new ones if needed.
- Utilise the existing evidence to support education of instructors/coaches.
- Foster a creative, bottom-up approach toward implementation (once high-level tasks have been completed).
- Activate all necessary partnerships.
Practical recommendations on how to set up a SCforH initiative can be found here.
Type 1: Explore the health-enhancing qualities of your existing sports activities, promote any new, relevant findings about health-enhancing qualities of your sport, and increase the participation in your sport as a result. Health benefits are inherent in each sport as a predominately moderate-to-vigorous activity, but their quantity and quality must be clearly identified. Most sports associations fail to take advantage of this opportunity.
Examples:
Lecture: The benefits of football fitness (Denmark)
“Golf & Health” Project (World Golf Foundation)
Type 2: Provide health-enhancing sports activities to different target population groups. Low threshold and adapted variations of your sports can be provided to broaden the user base and grow participation rates, especially for targeted population groups such as older people.
Examples:
Aerobics for persons with intellectual disabilities (Sweden)
Play & Stay Teenage Initiative: Gaelic Athletic Association (Ireland)
Judo: A gentle and healthy way for 55+ (Belgium)
Senior gymnastics: Highlights for body and mind 60+ (Finland)
Grandparents and children moving together: A practical model (Finland)
Senior Sport School (Sweden)
Walking Football (Great Britain)
Wheelchair Hurling (Ireland)
Type 3: Provide exercise programmes for people with special health needs. Health-enhancing exercise is defined as planned, structured, and repetitive bodily movement that is designed to improve or maintain one or more components of physical fitness and health. Examples might include exercise to improve cardiopulmonary fitness after a heart attack or interventions to promote back health.
Examples:
Exercise programme to meet special health needs (International Sports & Culture Association)
Illness Prevention Through Physical Activity (Sweden)
Physical Activity on Prescription (Sweden)
Fall prevention (Germany) & basic fitness programme (Slovenia)
The Dance Project. Supporting Positive Mental Health for Girls (Sweden)
Type 4: Develop your member clubs as health-promotion settings. This means delivering general health promotion interventions within your clubs for the benefit of your members, such as providing information about healthy nutrition, making the club smoke-free, running emotional well-being campaigns, promoting good sleeping habits, and warning against sedentary lifestyles. This philosophy should be integrated into your club values and practices, including the coach education programme.
Examples:
Gymnastic clubs as health-promoting settings (Germany)
Healthy Stadia Network (EU)
Gaelic Athletic Association Healthy Club Evaluation (Ireland)
The Settings Approach in a Gaelic Athletic Association Club context (Ireland) A
The Settings Approach in a Gaelic Athletic Association Club context (Ireland) B
Health promotion using the Settings Approach (Ireland)