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e-Debate: Kylie Bates shares her thoughts in Round 1
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Kylie Bates comments on the relatioship between sport and behaviour change and cites an interesting example from Nauru in the Pacific region. Read her full comments below...

How much sport is too much sport? What’s the key to optimising the balance between sport and educational components in health awareness programmes?

It’s well documented in research on topics from tobacco use to safe sex that being informed about health issues is only the first, and possibly the least, significant step in adopting a healthy behaviour. The crucial next steps involve:

  • being convinced the behaviour is worthwhile;
  • taking action;
  • re-confirming the idea is a good one; and
  • maintaining the behaviour.

For sport to impact on the adoption of healthy behaviours, it needs to do two things well. Firstly, the sport experience needs to be “sticky” to be valued by its participants. That is, it needs to be inclusive, well organised, challenging and fun. Secondly, the sports activities need to be designed in a way that promotes the factors that contribute to people choosing healthy behaviours.

How can we formulate realistic aims for Sport for Development projects aimed at improving health? Can you name examples of realistic aims?

Historically, sport for development has done itself a disservice by overstating it’s capacity to impact on development goals. Sport should aim to impact on a specific health related behaviour rather than taking responsibility for presenting the entire health solution. In many cases it will be necessary to keep digging until there is a single behaviour identified that can help unlock the other healthy behaviours.

For example, in Nauru, a country with the highest rate of obesity in the world, the initial target behaviour was simply for women get to the basketball courts once a week. The focus of the program was therefore on providing transport for the women (the men would usually have the car to go to work) and providing childcare options. Once at the court, there were few barriers that would prevent the women from taking part in an hour of physical activity, which could contribute to reducing the incidence of non communicable disease.

Choosing a less specific behaviour change or education-focused objective (for example, increasing awareness of the risk factors of diabetes) may have meant overlooking the key actions that would facilitate the participation.

[This article has been edited by the Operating Team. If you would like to submit a comment, please make sure your text is less than 600 characters!]

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