Is sport really healthy? Research has demonstrated many benefits of practicing sport on social (friendship, cohesion), mental (self-esteem and self-image) and physical (fitness) health. Nevertheless, sport experience is not positive for everyone, where sport burn-out, injuries or harassment cases have been reported. In other words, a paradox arises in terms of sport contribution to health, when answering the question “is sport a physical activity opportunity in an unhealthy environment”?

As voluntary organisation, this community play an important role, with 12% of European citizens practicing in sports clubs, up to 50% for children and youth and with 6% of adults volunteering. Indeed, sports clubs have a powerful role to play in the society, and researchers and policy-makers agree that this role is underexploited.

The Health Promoting Sports Clubs (HPSC) research project has as objective to study how sport organisations, especially grassroots sports clubs (non-for-profit associations) and sports federation promote health for their members. This research project seeks to generate evidence on health promotion in sports clubs, to create tools and intervention for stakeholders and to support the development of a HPSC community.

The final report of the project is out, summarising two year of research in Irealnd and highlithing key messages of the Health Promoting Sports Clubs Policy Audit Tool project: Final report

In this website, you will find different sections depending on your role, presenting the theory, productions (tools, guidelines…) and contact for networking.