It's not just about competition! Building sport's capacity for population-focused physical activity promotion and development of healthy settings
- Authors: Casey, Meghan , Harvey, Jack , Payne, Warren , Eime, Rochelle
- Date: 2009
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper presented at 2009 Australia Conference of Science and Medicine in Sport, Seventh National Physical Activity Conference, Sixth National Sports Injury Prevention Conference, Be Active '09, Brisbane, Queensland : 14th-17th October 2009
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- Description: Understanding organisational capacity is crucial for addressing how organisations can develop in order to contribute to health promotion objectives and facilitate the implementation of health promotion activities within their settings. This study explored the capacity of Sport Governing Organisations (SGOs) to participate in population-focused health promotion activities. Participants from SGOs in the Australian state of Victoria were invited to complete a Health Promotion and Sport Assessment Tool (HP-SAT) which included items from capacity building checklists (strength of a coalition, capacity of an organisation to tackle health issues, and quality of planning including strategic and operational planning for health promotion) and a partnership analysis tool. Participants completed the HP-SAT in two phases—first to identify their SGO's current capacity to implement health promotion activities; and second a reflection of their SGO's capacity five years previously, prior to funding from a health promotion body. For each substantive area in the HP-SAT (e.g., capacity to address health issues) a composite score was calculated by summing the numerically coded responses to each item pertaining to the particular area. The scores represented the capacity to implement health promotion activities, and were expressed on a scale of 0–100. Paired samples t-tests were used to test for differences in the capacity scores between the two time points. The mean scores for the six capacity and partnership areas ranged from 39.1 to 61.5 at the retrospective survey and significantly increased to 56.9–78.2 for the current survey (p < 0.05 for all six areas). Scores for operational planning for health promotion and SGO collaboration activities increased the most, by 27.9 and 19.4 percentage points, respectively. Strategic planning for health promotion scored the lowest for the current survey. This presentation will discuss how to build capacity within the sport sector to facilitate the implementation of health promotion activities and to engage sport settings in health promotion activities. In particular, it will focus on how to promote health by creating health-promoting environments and/or increase physical activity levels through sport participation.
Linking school-based sport programs to sport club membership
- Authors: Payne, Warren , Eime, Rochelle , Harvey, Jack , Maher, Shelley , Strachan, J.
- Date: 2006
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport Vol. 9, no. Supplement 1 (2006), p. 39-40
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- Description: This research was undertaken as part of the evaluation of the VicHealth Participation for Health (PfH) Scheme. VicHealth allocate A$ 3.3 million per year to support Victorian state sporting associations (SSAs) through the PfH Scheme to increase population physical activity levels and health via increasing membership of sporting clubs. SSAs were required to allocate a portion of these funds to participation based programs. While setting for participation was not directed, many (n = 27, 44.0%) of the SSAs conducted school-based sport programs. This research sought to explore the factors affecting the linking of school-based programs with sporting club membership. SSAs reported that 50.6% of the PfH Scheme programs (n = 43) were delivered in a school setting. Focus-group discussions found that, in general, the SSAs did not see the school-based programs being a vehicle for directly recruiting club members. Rather, the programs were used to increase the visibility of the sport, train teachers in the sport and to involve children in physical activity. Barriers to linking school-based program participation to club membership included conflict in program delivery time with club activities, and limited ability of club volunteers to assist with school-based programs. A case-study will be presented which involves the introduction of yachting into schools. In general, the SSAs believed school-based engagement was a poor investment. They also felt that agencies such as VicHealth should advocate for the provision of adequate sport infrastructure within schools rather than the schools relying upon the limited resources of the sporting sector to provide school sport services.