Healthy Stadia: An Insight from Policy to Practice

Public health is a key priority for developed and developing nations. Indeed, many countries have sought strategies to promote health and reduce health inequalities. A ‘settings approach’ to promoting health has been endorsed by the World Health Organization, which has seen settings such as workplaces, schools, hospitals and prisons utilised to promote health. Alongside this, sport has received increasing pressure to consider its social role within the societies and communities in which it operates. Healthy Stadia is a European focused initiative with lessons relevant for global audiences to develop: (i) healthier stadium environments for fans and non-matchday visitors (e.g. smoke-free environments), (ii) healthier club workforces (e.g. bike to work schemes) and (iii) healthier populations in local communities (e.g. child obesity interventions).

This book outlines lessons and insight from practitioners and empirical research for those seeking to learn and research stadia as a settings approach to health promotion. The areas covered include: practical considerations for health promotion in sports stadia; empirical research on the sports stadia as a setting for public health promotion; research on physical activity and health promotion programmes delivered by the outward facing community trusts attached to sports clubs; an analysis of the policy considerations for health promotion by sports clubs in school based settings and critical insight and discussion surrounding the use of physical activity and sport interventions to promote physical activity and public health. The chapters in this book originally published in a special issue of Sport in Society.

Daniel Parnell is a Senior Lecturer in Business Management. He has extensive research leadership experience with national interventions that aim to use sport to develop social and health outcomes.

Kathryn Curran is a Senior Lecturer in Physical Activity, Exercise and Health and Non-Executive Director of the NGO European Healthy Stadia Network. Kathryn’s primary research interests and outputs centre on the design, implementation and evaluation of community physical activity and health interventions.

Matthew Philpott is Executive Director of the NGO European Healthy Stadia Network. Matthew has worked in the area of health promoting settings for over 12 years, with an initial research background in philosophy and psychology.