To Örebro University

Introduction: A lack of rigorous, objective measurement of health promotion (HP) in sports clubs has been identified. This study developed and validated content of an observational tool for sports managers to evaluate HP within their clubs.

Methods: First, a rapid literature review identified sports club HP observational tools and their development process. Second, a 3-round Delphi study gathered feedback from 69 sports stakeholders to design a checklist. Round 1 created items and observation areas; Round 2 obtained feedback, item suggestions and reformulations; Round 3 structured items into a checklist and rated them on three indicators. Third, experts categorized items into health determinants from the health promoting sports club (HPSC) model and drafted a user's guide.

Results: The rapid review yielded 11 studies, including tools for injury surveillance, coaching behaviours, alcohol management, referee-athlete interaction and motivation, but none directed at HP. The Delphi study round 1 included 18 respondents formulating 24 items organized into: Locker room, Website, Cafeteria & Food Offerings and Facilities & Surroundings. Round 2 included 31 respondents validating 43 items and reformulating 'Locker room' into 'Locker and Restrooms'. Round 3 included 21 respondents validating 36 items separated into the four areas. Five researchers categorized items into Economic (n = 5), Environmental (n = 16), Organizational (n = 17) and Social (n = 9) health determinants. The HPSC Observational Tool includes a user's guide, a checklist including scoring methods and recommendations.

Conclusion: This study provides an innovative observational tool for sports managers to assess their club's HP. Sports managers can directly evaluate specific areas and follow recommendations for improvement.

Objective: There is limited evidence on how sports clubs implement health promotion (HP) through a settings-based approach. This study explored how grassroots sports club promote health by examining their organisational contexts and the roles of sports managers across different stages of HP implementation.

Design: Qualitative multiple case study design.

Setting: Grassroots sports clubs operating in five countries.

Method: Six sports clubs were selected based on predefined criteria: affiliation with a national sports federation, more than 5 years of operation, and provision of sports activities for at least four age categories. Data were collected through semistructured interviews with sports club managers. A deductive thematic analysis was conducted using the Health Promoting Sports Club (HPSC) logic model to examine inputs, activities, outcomes, and impacts, alongside managerial roles across different stages of HP development.

Results: Sports clubs varied in organisational context and orientation towards HP, with implementation stages ranging from initial activity-based approaches to fully embedded, organisation-wide strategies. Managerial leadership emerged as a key driver of progression, evolving from basic coordination in the early stages to strategic planning, partnership development, and system integration in more advanced stages. Common inputs included support from sports federations, municipalities, volunteers, and local partnerships. HP activities included health education integrated into training, inclusive and accessible programmes, safeguarding policies, and community-oriented events. Reported outcomes included improved health literacy, safer sports practices, and enhanced organisational competence. Long-term impacts were perceived as healthier lifestyles, stronger social cohesion, and improved club sustainability.

Conclusion: Grassroots sports clubs represent a valuable setting for HP; however, health impact depends on the extent to which HP is systematically embedded within organisational policies, practices, and culture. Managerial capacity and multi-level partnerships are critical mechanisms for achieving sustainable HP development.

Introduction: Few older adults participate in organised sport. The reasons highlighted have predominantly focused on physical health factors related to the effects of physical activity. We argue that what, who, and how we ask matters in understanding more about older adults' participation in sport. We need more knowledge regarding how participation relates to health beyond purely the physiological effects of physical activity. The aim of this study was therefore to contribute knowledge about which health resources older adults find meaningful for participation in organised sport.

Method: This study applied salutogenic theory to identify health resources through a cross-sectional survey. The sample included more than 1,000 sports clubs in Sweden (n = 4,837 older adults, 60-96 years of age, one-third women, participating in 50 different sports). Open-ended responses from the Salutogenic Physical Activity Health Resources Questionnaire were analysed using a theory-driven approach.

Results and conclusion: We propose HeRO, an empirically based conceptual model, to explain older adults' participation in organised sport. Participation can be explored and understood as a combination of health resources that people consider meaningful. Ten health resources were identified, with the majority of respondents highlighting having fun, socialising with others, maintaining sport as a routine in their lives, and feeling fit as central to their participation.

Concepts like public health, health, and health promotion have been used in relation to sports in different ways in practice, research, and policy. That sport is important and closely associated with public health is quite clear. Many research papers claim that there are obvious connections between the value of physical activity and sport for the health of individuals, as well as for health in society. At the same time, promoting public health is one of the main reasons for large governmental funding for sports in many countries. But how can the relation, or rather the relations, between health promotion and sport be understood? This chapter will theorize the relation between health promotion and sports through five categories: (i) health promotion as an outcome of sports, (ii) health promotion through sports, (iii) health promotion in sports, (iv) health promotion and sports in collaboration, and (v) health-promoting sports. In these categories, the authors discuss and illustrate how research in different ways defines health promotion on one hand and sports on the other and, thus, what research takes for granted in relation to what sports can do. The chapter concludes that understanding the relation between health promotion and sports cannot be achieved by focusing exclusively on only one of the identified relations. Instead of maintaining barriers between different disciplines and relations, researchers and practitioners should work with health promotion and sports as the plaster that stabilizes the whole picture in a changing society. This approach can better utilize the potential of sports in promoting health.

Based on sexual revictimization theory, this study investigates the role of individual characteristics (e.g., depression and subjective well-being) and contextual factors (school and organized activities) in the development of sexual harassment revictimization among Swedish Grade 7 (46% girls; Mage = 14.09) adolescents who were followed over 3 consecutive years. The analytic sample comprises adolescents in the school context (T1 N = 678, T2 N = 563, and T3 N = 471) and in organized free-time activity contexts (T1 n = 443, T2 n = 400, and T3 n = 356). Our findings suggest that adolescents with experiences of sexual harassment victimization in Grade 7 were at an increased risk of being sexually revictimized the following 2 years across the two distinct developmental contexts. Further, our results reveal that adolescents are more sexually harassed by their peers in organized activity contexts both concurrently and over time if they were victims of sexual harassment in the school context and the other way around. The findings underscore the need for sexual harassment prevention interventions to consider different developmental contexts simultaneously and to focus on the history of adolescents' experiences of victimization.

As front-line players in sports clubs, coaches can create a positive context influencing athletes' health decisions and behaviours. However, coaches rarely engage in health promotion (HP) practices due to various obstacles. Coaching philosophy, encompassing beliefs, principles, and values, significantly influences coaches' practices. However, its impact on HP remains unexplored, are the main factor influencing coaches' practices, has not yet been studied in regard to HP. The aim of this study was to explore coaches' perceptions of what they define as health in relation to their coaching philosophies, actions and strategies they undertake in relation to HP, as well as alignment or discrepancies between these three elements. An exploratory mixed-method survey design (QUAL=>quan) was used in this study. A sample of 299 sports coaches in Europe completed an online survey, including closed ended questions on their influence on sports participants health behaviours, barriers for HP and open-ended questions on coaching philosophies and associated health benefits, keywords linked to health, and strategies for HP. Qualitative and quantitative data were analysed using inductive thematic analysis and multivariate statistics respectively. While coaches define health mainly through keywords related to physical health (e.g. 'hydration', 'recovery'), their perceived coaching philosophies were focused around nine themes, related to social and mental health, predominantly using participant management and communication as implementation strategies. Furthermore, they identified lack of time, knowledge and human resources as the main barriers to pay attention to HP. The present findings highlight a gap between how coaches define health, what they consider they can influence and how they promote health. Further work is needed to explore the paradox between coaches' definition of health and self-reported actions focusing mostly on social and mental health mostly.

The sports club setting is a key context for health promotion, but it can also be associated with risky behaviours. Sports coaches play a crucial role in supporting the physical, mental and social health of sport participants but often lack the resources and support to do so. This paper proposes a guide to help coaches become health promoters by aligning their actions with the Health Promoting Sports Club model, which represents the setting-based approach applied to sports clubs. An embedded mixed-method study with a QUAL (qual) design was used, where 15 experts took part in 5 meetings and 299 coaches provided input through an online survey. Four steps were carried out: (1) defining the health-promoting sports coach and key action principles, (2) co-constructing progression stages using the settings-based approach, (3) identifying key actions for promoting health in different moments of coaching (i.e., before, during, and after training and competition, and outside of coaching), and (4) developing long-term intervention components. A definition of the health-promoting sports coach was produced, and eight key action principles have been identified, divided into three dimensions: connection with the system, adoption of a coaching philosophy, and focus on participants. Five stages of progression for integrating health promotion into coaching have been established, ranging from risk prevention to a global approach involving the entire sports system. Specific actions for each moment of coaching (before, during, and after training and competition, and outside of coaching) have been identified, such as monitoring the physical, mental, and social health of participants or plan the coaching session to ensure safety, inclusion, and well-being for all sports participants, staying open for last-minute changes. Finally, long-term intervention components to support the implementation of these actions in practice have been developed, based on what coaches are already doing, the skills they possess and the five stages of progression. This paper enables the development of a guide to help sports coaches promote health by identifying concrete actions and short- and long-term interventions, whilst making links with the health promoting sports club model. It broadens the scope of coaching by incorporating health principles, while emphasising the need to adapt to the environment and context of the club. This work calls for future research to test the effectiveness and feasibility of these approaches in various sporting environments.

The application of the settings-based approach to sports clubs requires a context-specific framework to develop and operationalize health promotion interventions. Incorporating top-down and bottom-up perspectives into interventions increases their efficiency, success and sustainability. In 2020, the health promoting sports club (HPSC) model and intervention framework were created, including strategies and intervention components. A subsequent concept mapping study generated 35 statements from sports club stakeholders highlighting their needs when developing health promotion initiatives. This commentary integrates the concept mapping results into the HPSC model and intervention framework. The process added new sports club levels, updated existing and developed new intervention components, then classified them into the framework. The revised HPSC model has seven levels while the revised intervention framework includes 13 strategies and 69 intervention components. This revised HPSC framework provides sports club stakeholders, public health experts and researchers a means to develop and implement targeted health promotion interventions.

Background: Various forms and types of knowledge have enjoyed legitimacy in physical education (PE) since sports techniques became the orienting idea for PE in economically advanced countries in the mid-twentieth century. The forms and types of knowledge granted legitimacy at any one moment are dependent on a range of socio-discursive factors. In this paper, we consider ball games knowledge within the Swedish PE teacher education context in the 2020s.

Purpose: The specific aim of the paper is to generate insights into how ball games experts within PE teacher education define legitimate ball games knowledge. Our proposition is that by examining the ways these experts define ball games knowledge, physical education teacher educators may develop more nuanced understandings of how and why knowledge comes to be seen as legitimate.

Methods: In order to conceptualize experts' knowledge of ball games, Shulman's concepts of content knowledge (CK) and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) were employed. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with two teacher educators who specialized in ball games education from three different PETE institutions in Sweden (n = 6). The interviews focused on the PETE educators' understandings of ball games and how they prepared preservice teachers to teach ball games.

Findings: The PETE educators defined ball games CK as: (1) understanding of games as a cultural phenomenon, (2) tactical understanding of games, and (3) embodied understanding of how to play ball games. The PETE educators defined ball games PCK as: (1) using ball games to meet different curricular goals, (2) focusing on tactical understanding with a small number of concepts, (3) adapting teaching so that all pupils are included, and (4) managing competition.

Conclusions: Four issues related to the legitimacy of this knowledge are raised. The issues concern the ways in which: (1) a complementary sport discourse is permeated by educational discourse to achieve legitimacy; (2) CK and PCK are designed to achieve legitimacy with different stakeholders; (3) public health discourse is not used to develop legitimacy for ball games knowledge, and (4) historical factors continue to affect experts' understandings of ball games. The central conclusion drawn from the investigation is that ball games experts engage in a complex process of discursive negotiation when defining the knowledge with which they work.

Purpose: The concepts of public health, health and health promotion have been used for decades in relation to sport in policy, research and practice. That sport has some kind of significance for and connection to public health is clear. But how can we understand the relationships between sport and public health?

The aim of this presentation is to argue that what is regarded as knowledge about the relationship between sport and public health largely depends on how the concepts of public health, health, health promotion and sport are framed.

Methods: In this presentation, we theorize the relationship between sport and public health as different patterns and give examples of how sports clubs can thus act as a health-promoting setting for different target groups.

Results: A first attempt to categorize the patterns in the four categories (i) health promotion as an outcome of sport, (ii) health promotion through sport, (iii) health promotion in sport, and (iv) health promoting sport. In these four categories we reveal research, that because of how they define health promotion and sport, are quite different. The different categories also use the concept of sport differently, as something that will always be healthy because it contains physical activity, as a mean, as an arena where you reach people or in a more integrated way.

Conclusions: We argue that it is not enough to recognize that physical activity and sport are good for people's physical health. By using a more inclusive conceptualization of how health can be promoted in, through and as health-promoting sport, health promotion studies can feed into the conclusions of other studies, i.e. what can be done about the how-question. What we propose and provide empirical examples of in this presentation can be seen as a theoretical basis for discussing the relationship or relationships between sport and public health that can be used in policy, research and practice. It is therefore possible to broaden the issue, to make it more complex, to go beyond compartmentalized thinking and to contribute to sustainable change in sport. Because, sustainable sport can be a question of how!