1.K. Workshop: Health Promoting Sports Clubs: tackling intervention implementation and evaluation challenges

Abstract

Abstract Settings have been defined as ‘the place or social context where people engage in daily activities in which environmental, organizational and personal factors interact to affect health and well-being’. Settings-based approaches have successfully been applied in different traditional settings, like schools, cities, and workplaces. During the last two decades, the health promoting sports clubs theoretical and empirical foundation has emerged to support sports clubs’ investment in health promotion beyond the provision of sport itself, leading to physical, social and mental benefits. Two recent literature reviews have showed limited evidence on validated health promotion measurement instrument and interventions, identifying only three interventions worldwide that have been rigorously evaluated. The present workshop will synthetises the mechanisms used in different health promoting sports clubs’ interventions, reflect on methods for intervention evaluation and offer guidelines for sports federation and clubs. The first presentation will set the scene by describing youth sports club's participation in Finland from 2016 to 2022, specifically providing insights on the determinants of sport drop out. The second presentation will offer a deep understanding of context and mechanisms leading to effectiveness, used in interventions to promote men's health in organised sport, using a rapid realist review methodology. The third presentation will complete the second by mapping provision and evaluation practice of interventions delivered by professional sports clubs in the UK, through a practice-based targeted review. The fourth presentation will showcase the type of evaluation needed to investigate health promoting sports club's intervention, drawing from a pragmatic feasibility trial conducted in Ireland. The fifth presentation will offer practical guidelines for national sports federation on how to implement health promoting sports clubs, through a toolkit which has been edited in collaboration with the World Health Organisation. Based on the different presentations, discussion will be engaged with Jan Seghers, who has conducted major work on implementing health promoting sports clubs in Flanders, as well as the speakers and the audience. We also plan to discuss the active mechanisms identified in the interventions and how to address challenges in conducting empirical research on health promoting sports clubs. Lastly, we will open the floor for reflections on intervention research conducted in other settings. Key messages • The workshop will synthetises evidence on health promoting sports club's intervention implementation and evaluation. • The workshop will provide guidelines and recommendations for conducting and evaluating health promoting sports clubs’ interventions.