SCforH Project Closing Seminar

Background

The core business of sports clubs is to organise sporting activities in a given sport or sports.
These club activities commonly place a strong focus on competitive sports and emphasise ath- letic development and sports performance, with a lesser focus on recreational sports and in- creasing physical activity through sports. With millions of members, sports clubs are the largest setting at which an opportunity exists to promote health-enhancing physical activity and health in general through the conduit of sports. The potential of sports to promote health-enhancing physical activity had been recognised at the political level in Europe. Initially, the White Paper on Sport by European Commission (2007) in- troduced the promotion of health-enhancing physical activity as a key objective of the EU sports policy3. Thereafter, in 2013, the Council of the European Union suggested SCforH implementa- tion as one of the 23 indicators that should be used to evaluate health-enhancing physical ac- tivity levels and policies in EU member states4. In addition, representatives of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) have expressed their interest in SCforH approach.

What is the SCforH approach?

SCforH is an expert-based approach that supports clubs as well as national and regional sport organisations to recognize the health potential of their sports disciplines and organize health-enhancing sports activities in the sports club setting.
The purpose of SCforH is to encourage sports clubs and national sport organizations to invest more in using the health potential of their particular sport. In practice, this primarily means pro- moting health-enhancing sports activities within sports clubs. Additional health bene ts may be gained by offering health education and promoting health in the sports club setting, which is the focus of the Health Promoting Sports Club (HPSC) initiative. Achieving good health is a desirable goal of sports clubs members and society as a whole, re- gardless of the reasons an individual engages in sports. SCforH encourages sports clubs to re- view their own activities and sport discipline(s) in the light of their health potential and promote greater participation in health-enhancing sports activities.

SCforH: the aim is to develop health promotion in the sports club context!