Could the pressure to solve health issues alone, be setting people up to fail?
Mainstream media, MPs and influencers emphasise ‘personal responsibility’ for health improvement. This usually ignores the obstacles most people face.
‘Social determinants of health‘ are the barriers to good health behaviours some people face. They include low income, long work hours, caring for children, poor access to health services, disability, gender, ethnicity and poor transport availability.
If multiple people and obstacles contributed to your health problem, it makes no sense to try to solve it alone. Community sport-based interventions are usually designed to help people overcome a range of barriers. They usually:
- take place in sports clubs or settings,
- reduce the cost barrier for participants compared with accessing services through the health system,
- incorporate education to help people understand what they need to do and how to get help,
- use group settings to help participants motivate and support each other.
“People are being helped all over the world to recover from cardiovascular disease, improve their health after breast and colorectal cancer, reverse Type 2 Diabetes and obesity.” said SportHealthTech CEO, Bastien Wallace.
“Running health interventions in sport settings provides a pathway to club sport and volunteering. This helps sustain health once the intervention is over- and it can inject new members and fans into your club,” said Bastien.
Sport Prescriptions exists to support people leading interventions. Our parent company SportHealthTech, will also help people conducting research on ways to reduce disease. We keep the language accessible, and we encourage you to subscribe to our newsletter, follow us on social media and share with your friends.
