“…Ireland as elsewhere is facing unprecedented health system challenges with an aging population and a high prevalence of chronic, lifestyle diseases, demanding a shift in the focus of health care from an acute hospital service model, which treats disease, to a service which focuses on prevention and health promotion in community care settings. (Bacon and Newton, 2014 ;Hajat and Stein, 2018;Lupton and Easton, 2015;O Donoghue et al , 2014; Wang and Wang, 2016) With an essential element of any effort to change a healthcare system being the education of future clinicians who will practice new approaches in new contexts (Allan et al, 2004) contemporary education needs to re ect the move away from the traditional focus on episodic care of individuals in hospitals to initiatives that foster learning in community health promotion and engagement (Dean 2009;Mc Mahon et al 2014a,b Mc Mahon et al 2016 ; WHO, 2013) Physical activity promotion and exercise prescription are integral to this approach, highlighted by the Exercise is Medicine initiative (Pedersen & Saltin, 2015), with systematic embedding of exercise theory and practice in entry level health professional education programmes, including physiotherapy, critical. (Cardinal et al2015;Dean, 2009;Gates et al , 2017Gates et al , & 2018Stoutenberg et al, 2020)Clinical education traditionally provided in hospital settings, limits the opportunity for a preventive health approach and there are signi cant shortfalls in terms of opportunities for students to gain practical health promotion experience due to a lack of community health promotion and exercise programmes in the primary healthcare setting.…”