The health promoting sports club model: an intervention planning framework

Researchers and policymakers acknowledge sports clubs (SCs) as health promoting settings. Limited research links the health promoting sports club (HPSC) concept with evidence-driven strategies to provide SCs guidance to develop health promotion (HP) interventions. As implementation science insists on theoretically grounded interventions, the present work's objective was to provide SCs an evidence-driven intervention framework for planning, developing and implementing HP initiatives. Four iteratively sequenced steps were undertaken: (i) investigation of 'health promoting' indicators, (ii) adaptation of the HPSC concept to create the HPSC model, (iii) formulation of published evidence-driven guidelines into strategies and implementable intervention components (ICs) and (iv) merging the HPSC model with the ICs to create an intervention planning framework for SCs. First, researchers drafted five HPSC indicators. Second, they defined three SC levels (macro, meso and micro) and four health determinants (organizational, environmental, economic and social) to create an HPSC model. Third, researchers used published guidelines to develop 14 strategies with 55 ICs. Fourth, three workshops (one each with French master-level sport students, French sport and health professionals and Swedish sport and health professionals) had participants classify the ICs into the model. The HPSC model and intervention framework are starting points to plan, select and deliver interventions to increase SC HP. This planning framework is usable in several ways: (i) clubs can apply strategies to achieve specific goals, (ii) clubs can target specific levels with corresponding ICs and (iii) ICs can be used to address particular health determinants.