Professional football clubs’ involvement in health promotion in Spain: an audit of current practices

Abstract

Professional football clubs' involvement in health promotion in Spain: An audit of current practices.

Exploring the provision and motives behind the adoption of health-promotion programmes in professional football clubs across four European countries

“…Our findings correspond with and expand previous studies investigating existing healthpromotion programmes [24], overall CSR engagement and integration in football clubs [25,28,29,37] and decision-making processes in foundations associated with professional football clubs in the UK [20,26]. In light of the integrative framework of CSR in football clubs [25], both RCT and pilot club representatives appeared to understand their club's adoption process of EuroFIT in a wide context considering both program (e.g., evidence base of program), operational (e.g., club infrastructure and human resources), social (e.g., societal needs) and strategic (e.g., club values and business and social objectives) motives irrespective of existing healthpromotion programs and organizational structure.…”

“…Adoption of health-promotion interventions within professional football organisations is a process where designated managers or decision-makers in clubs or their foundations (a charitable arm of football clubs) decide whether they should commit to delivering a specific project [20,21]. Despite recent encouragement from the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), to adopt evidence-based community intervention projects [22] and the focus on health as part of clubs' CSR provision [1,23], relatively few professional football organisations are adopting such health-promotion programmes in real-world settings [24]. A recent audit of Spanish football clubs reported that club representatives had contrasting views about their respective club's role in health promotion provision; most viewed health-promoting CSR activities as outside their core business as a football club, while others believed it supported the club's social role [24].…”

“…Despite recent encouragement from the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), to adopt evidence-based community intervention projects [22] and the focus on health as part of clubs' CSR provision [1,23], relatively few professional football organisations are adopting such health-promotion programmes in real-world settings [24]. A recent audit of Spanish football clubs reported that club representatives had contrasting views about their respective club's role in health promotion provision; most viewed health-promoting CSR activities as outside their core business as a football club, while others believed it supported the club's social role [24]. In their integrative framework of CSR integration in European professional football clubs, Fifka and Jaeger [25] propose a complex process involving both internal (e.g.…”

“…There is growing evidence of the public health impact from programmes run in professional football clubs targeting adults [12,15] and a call for a more strategic approach to increase the adoption of health interventions in clubs [21]. However, there is little knowledge as to whether football clubs harness the potential of delivering health-promotion programs to this target group [24]. In addition, studies exploring drivers or motives behind CSR provision have mostly focused on how clubs use drivers or motives as incentives to develop an overall CSR platform as part of an organisational structure or through social partnerships such as foundations or CSTs [27][28][29][30].…”

Expressions of masculine identity through sports-based reminiscence: An ethnographic study with community-dwelling men with dementia

“…Sports can be tightly interwoven with formative life experiences (Schofield & Tolson, 2010), and being part of a team can reinforce identity, personal value and offer acceptance (Weiss, 2001). Harnessing men's interest in sport can facilitate uptake of physical and mental health interventions (Bruun et al, 2014;Carone et al, 2016;Curran et al, 2017), and football clubs become vessels to share public health messages with men (Lozano-Sufrategui et al, 2019;Pringle et al, 2014).…”