Jeroen Meganck

Youth sports clubs’ potential as health-promoting setting: Profiles, motives and barriers

Setting and Objective: For decades, the World Health Organisation has promoted settings-based health promotion, but its application to leisure settings is minimal. Focusing on organised sports as an important leisure activity, the present study had three goals: exploring the health promotion profile of youth sports clubs, identifying objective club characteristics (e.g. size, type of sport), predicting the presence/absence of health promotion in youth sports clubs and identifying perceived motives and barriers to health promotion in youth sports clubs, thereby improving the basis for policy guidelines. Method: Respondents were representatives from the board of 154 youth sports clubs. Data were collected through an online survey, including the health-promoting sports club index (HPSC-I). Linear regression and analysis of variance were used to identify predictors and differences. Results: Even though the motives were strongly supported, a majority of youth sports clubs were rated as low health promoting on the HPSC-I (59%). Overall, linear regression indicated that clubs founded more recently, offering multiple types of sports and offering both recreation and competition scored higher on the health promotion indices. Health promotion not being a priority of the board and lack of expertise were identified as the most important barriers. Conclusion: Progress is needed before youth sports clubs can truly be considered health-promoting settings. Policy suggestions are made to address the barriers, for example, financial incentives to maximise efforts and establishing collaborations between sports clubs and health promotion experts.

Piecing the puzzle together: case studies of international research in health-promoting sports clubs

This paper seeks to review the current international health-promoting sports club (HPSC) research, drawing together findings based on case studies from various countries to illustrate the status of HPSCs. In addition, future challenges for HPSC research and implementation are considered. The review includes six case studies from five countries. In summary, there are two major research themes in this area, namely ‘research into HPSC activity’ and ‘research into HPSC networks’. The first theme investigates the extent to which sports clubs and/or national sports organisations invest in health promotion (HP) – both in policy and practice. The latter theme is driven by an intention to widen the scope of HPSCs to reach novel internal actors, like parents, siblings, etc., and/or external non-sporting bodies, like communities, schools, etc. The future challenges for HPSC research require a better understanding of the motives, barriers and capacities of sports clubs and coaches. Sports organisations, clubs and coaches generally support the intent of the HPSC concept, but even with the best evidence- or theory-based HP programmes/guidelines/standards, nothing will happen in practice if the nature and capacities of sports clubs are not better acknowledged. Therefore, a call for embracing implementation science is finally made to enhance implementation.

Sport Clubs in Belgium

In the present chapter a status quaestionis of club-organised sport in Flanders/Belgium is presented. More precisely, the most recent and relevant data will be discussed. First, we describe the historical and societal context of sport clubs in Flanders/Belgium. Second, attention is given to the role and the position of sport clubs. Time-trend and cross-sectional data are used to give more insight on this. Third, the main features of sport clubs are presented. Here, we successively focus on the sport clubs’ structural characteristics, their sport provision, their members, their volunteers, their financial situation and the role that sport clubs see for themselves. The fourth section deals with a specific topic, in this way that we provide some data with regard to the question whether sport clubs can be considered as health promoters.

The Gap Between Attitudes and Use in Prediction of Effect of an Online Smoking Cessation Program

This article describes an investigation of the effect of attitude toward and use of different components of an online smoking cessation program on stage transition based on the Transtheoretical Model. Participants were 299 users of the StopSmokingCoach, an online smoking cessation program, who completed an online questionnaire concerning their attitudes toward the program and its components within 6 months after registration. These attitude measurements and participants’ actual use of the program components were linked to stage transitions of these users. Attitudes toward the StopSmokingCoach and its components were positive; however, only one of these attitude measurements (instructiveness of e-mail tips) predicted actual stage transitions. In contrast, frequency/intensity of use of the coach and 3 of its components (advices, forum, and personal charts, but not the diary, tips, or decisional balance) was significantly related to stage transitions. These results suggest that users do not need to have positive attitudes toward a health program in order to achieve behavioral change. Use of some, but not all program components appears to be more important.

Does sports club participation contribute to physical activity among children and adolescents? A comparison across six European countries:

Aims: Insufficient physical activity (PA) is one of the largest public health challenges of our time and requires a multisectoral public-health response. PA recommendations state that all children and adolescents should accumulate at least 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA) daily and carry out vigorous PA (VPA) three times weekly. While participation in sports club activities is known to enhance the probability of reaching the recommended overall PA level, less is known about the contribution of sports club participation to VPA, and few cross-national comparisons have been carried out. The purpose of this paper is to study whether participation in sports club activities is associated with meeting the overall PA and VPA recommendations among children and adolescents across six European countries, namely Belgium (Flanders), Czech Republic, Finland, France, Ireland and Sweden. Methods: Analyses were carried out on existing self-reported national data sets using descriptive statistics and logistic regression. Results: Results indicate that approximately two-thirds of children and adolescents take part in sports club activities in the given countries. Sports club participants were more likely to meet the overall PA recommendations (OR 2.4–6.4) and VPA recommendation (OR 2.8–5.0) than non-participants. Conclusions: The extent to which overall PA and/or VPA is gained through sports club participation versus other settings needs to be further studied. Nonetheless, it can be argued that sports clubs have an important position in PA promotion for younger populations.

Coaches’ and players’ perceptions of health promotion activities in sport clubs

Objectives: To better understand the role sports club coaches can play in health promotion (HP), as well as factors supporting this task, this study compared coaches’ and players’ perception of coaches’ HP activities and tested whether coaches’ basic need satisfaction predicted coaches’ HP activities mediated by self-determined motivation to coach. Design: A cross-sectional design was employed. Multivariate analyses were used to compare coaches’ and players perceptions of HP, while structural equation modelling was used to test the model. Setting: Community football clubs in the south east of France. Method: A sample of 101 coaches and 404 players from 18 soccer clubs completed a questionnaire assessing HP activities’ perceptions. Coaches also completed scales on basic need satisfaction and self-determined motivation. Results: Similar patterns were found for coaches and players’ answers, with only a few differences, especially in the Respect for Oneself and Others dimension. Moreover, basic need satisfaction predicted Respect for Oneself and Others through self-determined motivation, while self-determined motivation was related to a Healthy Lifestyle, but basic need satisfaction and self-determined motivation were not linked to Substance Use. Conclusion: Results highlight few differences between coaches’ and players’ perceptions of coaches’ HP activities. Coaches’ HP activities are sparse, but seem to be perceived by their players. Self-determined coaches were more likely to promote a Healthy Lifestyle and Respect for Oneself and Others. The lack of relationship between motivational variables and Substance Use could potentially reflect the complexity of drug and alcohol prevention in sports clubs.

Exploring strategies to improve the health promotion orientation of Flemish sports clubs

Sports clubs are increasingly recognized as an innovative setting for health promotion, as exemplified by the health promoting sports club concept. This study aims to assess the health promotion orientation of both youth sports clubs (YSC) and adult sports clubs (ASC) in Flanders and to identify the motives and barriers as reported by their representatives as a basis for proposing intervention strategies to improve the health promotion orientation in sports clubs. A total of 253 Flemish sports clubs, consisting of 156 YSC and of 97 ASC, completed the online questionnaire, covering club characteristics (e.g. finances, human resources), perceived motives and barriers for health promotion and the health promoting sports club index. Even though YSC were more health promoting than ASC, the results indicated that all sports clubs could improve their health promotion orientation. The most consistent predictors of health promotion orientation are perceived motives index for YSC and perceived lack of resources for ASC. Based on these results, interventions to enhance the health promoting orientation need to tackle the lack of resources such as lack of expertise regarding health promotion. Interventions aimed specifically at YSC should emphasize the direct benefits, for example by demonstrating how health promotion helps clubs to improve the provision of high quality sports participation and by awarding a health promotion quality label.