Scientific Programme
Industry Partner Programme
PS-PL02 - Understanding the challenges and benefits of increasing community sport participation
Date: 04.07.2024, Time: 11:30 - 12:45, Lecture room: Lomond Auditorium
Description
Sport participation is potentially a key component of the physical activity required to maintain and enhance health outcomes. It provides significant benefits in terms of physical and psychological health as well as improved social outcomes and community cohesion. One of the challenges is that participation rates vary significantly between countries and across age and socio-demographic categories within countries. In order to support and grow sport participation more data is required to develop evidence based national strategies. This plenary will draw on experiences and research data from across Europe and Canada to highlight the social factors that influence sport participation rates leading to an outline of a significant community sport intervention designed to enhance physical activity levels and health as part of a national ‘Get Healthy Get Active’ programme.
Chair
Richard Davison
University of the West of Scotland, School of Health and Life Sciences
United Kingdom
ECSS Glasgow 2024: PS-PL02
Speaker A
Laura Misener
Western University, School of Kinesiology
Canada
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Approaches towards socio and contextual understandings of sport participation across global contexts
Although people manage their own leisure time, we must recognize that states do attempt to influence citizens’ leisure activities (Bramham et al., 1993). For instance, governments across Europe promote sport as a worthwhile leisure pastime, as reflected in the ‘Sport for All’ Charter of the European Council (1975). EU member states and elsewhere across the globe present a similar policy agenda on sport. For example, a critical part of the Canadian Federal Minister of Sport St.Onge’s mandate is to increase accessibility to sport programmes, reduce barriers and the achievement of social and economic goals through the intentional use of sport (Trudeau, 2021). Raising levels of sport participation and community engagement in sport, especially among disadvantaged groups such as those with a disability that are less likely to take part in sport, is a particular sport policy across Europe and North America (Hoekman, Breedveld & Scheerder, 2011). This presentation will shed light on differences in sport participation across Europe and provide explanations for these differences, by linking it back to contextual factors. It will challenge the role of government in recent sport participation trends in Europe and internationally and argue that part of the sport participation differences is well beyond the control of sport policy. To conclude it will highlight the added value of governmental involvement in sport for disadvantaged sections of society.
Speaker B
Louise Mansfield
Brunel University London, Life sciences
United Kingdom
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Community sport for public health and wellbeing: reaching, engaging and raising physical activity levels through complex community sport projects
Community sport is being promoted across Europe to raise population levels of physical activity for health and wellbeing. This presentation outlines the methods and findings from the Health and Sport Engagement (HASE) project; a mixed methods outcome, process and economic evaluation of a complex community sport programme. It engaged previously inactive people in sport for 1 x 30 minutes / week. This presentation details the approach and results from participatory focus groups (n=32 x 1 hour) ensuring HASE activities reached, met the needs of, and engaged local inactive people. It explains how a bespoke package of public health training, delivered to sport coaches (n=15) maximised the quality of workforce knowledge in designing and delivering community sport. The findings showed that a total of 550 people engaged in the HASE project. There were large and significant increases in vigorous and moderate physical activity and sport during project design and training. Statistically significant increases over time in happiness were recorded by participants. Quality adjusted life years were slightly higher over time but not statistically significant. Costs of the project varied depending on the character of the inactive population and the delivery requirements. Overall, the HASE project showed that with the right support and provision, barriers to participating in sport can be overcome. Previously inactive people can take part in community sport activity, enjoy doing so, and potentially gain health and wellbeing benefits from participation. The presentation concludes with critical commentary on building and using evidence on community sport for health and wellbeing.