Sport sur ordonnance : de la prescription à l’engagement des bénéficiaires atteints d’une maladie chronique

Abstract

From campaigns encouraging people to “exercise more” to the medical prescription of physical activities, the tools of the new “health-sport” action are gradually progressing in France, with a view to prevent long-term medical conditions. Consequently, in the framework of the patient’s therapeutic education, physical and sport activity is an essential part of the treatment of numerous chronic diseases. In 2012, Strasbourg was the first French city to experiment with such mechanism, financed and organized by local authorities and entitled Sport-santé sur ordonnance (SSO) (prescription health-sport). However, the prescription given by the physician does not warrant the actual practice of any physical or sport activity, or the patients’ lasting commitment to regularly practice such activity. Based on a qualitative survey conducted among patients involved in the SSO mechanism, this article discusses the ways one enters into this program, actual practices, meaning of the beneficiaries’ involvement in or withdrawal from the program and/or their pursuit of a physical activity. The article cross-references the nature of practices, the period of participation and a number of social factors. Associated with precarious social conditions, chronic diseases are a driver of vulnerability with regards to individual trajectories driving patients away from physical activity. This way, the prescribed activity may paradoxically constitute some kind of “resource” providing access to an otherwise socially unplanned activity. The regular practice of a physical activity prescribed to previously non-active patients may represent a change in the individual trajectories of socially disadvantaged populations.