engleski

Sports Club For Health (SCFORH): 12 Years Of A Successful European Initiative

Background: The Sports Club for Health (SCforH) initiative started in 2008, to assist sports clubs in promoting health-enhancing physical activity. In support of this endeavour, SCforH guidelines were issued in 2011 and updated in 2017. The SCforH initiative has been supported by three large European Union grants and included partner organisations from 18 countries. In 2013, the Council of the European Union proposed the national implementation of SCforH guidelines as one of the 23 indicators for evaluation of HEPA levels and policies in the European Union member states. Recently, the European Commission recognised the SCforH initiative as a “success story” and an example of good practice. The aim of this study was to summarise the outcomes of the SCforH movement in Europe over the past 12 years and provide recommendations for its further development. Methods: We conducted a range of online surveys in 36 European countries (including all 28 EU member states, 5 EU candidate countries, Iceland, Norway, and Switzerland). The survey sample included 549 sport associations, 22 SCforH project partners, and 42 representatives of HEPA Europe member organisations. Results: The awareness of SCforH guidelines was the highest among national sport-for-all organizations (54%) followed by national umbrella sport organizations (50%), national Olympic committees (25%), national sport associations (20%), and European-level sports federations (8%). We also found that more than 40% of HEPA Europe member organizations were aware of the SCforH guidelines. The estimates suggested that in most European countries SCforH initiatives were implemented in less than 10% of sports clubs. Conclusions: Given there are more than 2.5 thousand sport associations, almost a million sports clubs, and more than 60 million individual sport club members in Europe, our findings indicate a great potential and importance of future dissemination of SCforH guidelines among European sports clubs and associations.

SCforH ; Sport Club for health ; guidelines ; health-enhancing physical activity ; EU ; European project ; sport ; initiative ; European countries

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