A review of settings-based health promotion with applications to sports clubs

Sports clubs have a long and traditional history in many countries, yet they remain underdeveloped and underutilized settings for health promotion. Leisure time settings, in general, have been in minor role among settings-based health promotion initiatives. Current health concerns in western countries, such as sedentary lifestyles and obesity, have aroused a need to expand health promotion to include also settings with greater potential to reach and engage children and adolescents in more vigorous activity. To develop these alternative, most often non-institutional, settings to the level of the established ones, it is important to review what has been done, what has been accepted and what is known from research, theory and practice to have contributed to health. Given that settings approaches have been implemented with diverse scope and without close cooperation between different initiatives, the first aim of this paper is, on the basis of a review of commonly used theories and practices, to propose a mutual definition for the settings approach to health promotion. The second is to examine the applicability of the theoretical basis to youth sports club settings. Sports clubs are used as a reflective setting when reviewing the traditional ones.