An exploration of national and local policies supporting health promoting sports clubs in the Republic of Ireland

ABSTRACT

The societal role which sports clubs can play in promoting health has been underexploited, and sports clubs have called for support from policymakers. Based on the Health Promoting Sports Clubs National Audit Tool, the present study has as objective to investigate how national public policies support health promotion in sports clubs, by questioning indicators of quality (references to other document, policy framing and evaluation), the content (target groups, health topics, type of policy instruments) and the mechanisms used by Irish decision-makers for coordination, evaluation, dissemination and implementation of these policies. The tool was completed in two steps comprising a systematic search of policy plans, programmes or regulations and 12 interviews with key informants. A content analysis of 17 policy documents, identified 49 policy actions targeting HP in sport clubs, coming from different sectors, but only policies from the health sector considered a settings-based approach, supporting a unique sports federation programme. Policies focus on a single health behaviour, where the most targeted were physical activity participation, gender inequity and the disability gap in access to sport clubs. The policy structure lacks coordination, monitoring, media campaigns and events, and therefore not adopting the HPSC concept, but only a health education approach. Future studies should support the acknowledgement of HP as an umbrella concept, in order to support the understanding and development of organisation and system change since policies are drivers for sport federations, local sport actors and sports clubs.

KEYWORDS:

• Health promoting sports clubs
• policy
• sport
• health in all policies

Acknowledgments

We thank each of the stakeholders for having taken time to participate in the present study.

Disclosure statement

No interest to declare.

Author contribution

AVH contributed to all roles, AL participated to conceptualisation, review and editing, AV participated to methodology, review and editing, CW contributed to funding acquisition, methodology, formal analysis, project administration and review and edit.

Additional information

Funding

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie SkłodowskaCurie grant agreement number 101028401.