Promoting Health and Access to Sport Equipment

Background The European guidelines on health-enhancing physical activity (HEPA) identify equal access to sports facilities as a key area for promoting HEPA. These guidelines reinforce the value of optimizing the use of existing infrastructures and encourages the use of school sports facilities for that purpose. Furthermore, this project is based on capitalizing the opportunity that school facilities provide to promote HEPA for both children and their relatives in primary schools after classes. Objectives This project aimed at promoting health-enhancing physical activity and equal access to sports facilities for families by: (1) opening school sports facilities to the children and their relatives, and (2) developing and implementing a school-based family-centred European health education program, focused in promoting physical activity behaviours, that take advantage of underutilized school resources after school classes (such as sports facilities, equipment, and materials). Implementation An intervention protocol was developed based on the literature review and on focus groups held with children and their relatives. The PHASE implementation has been carried out in Portuguese, Spanish, Polish, Czech and Latvian schools, for 10 weeks, with two 60-minute sessions per week. In half of the schools, facilities were open to families to freely use to practice physical activities. In the other half, physical activities sessions were supervised and conducted by a qualified professional. Achievements A total of 133 children and 135 relatives participated in the sessions of the project. From pre- to the post-intervention, both reported overall improvements in physical activity and sedentary behaviours levels, as well as in family cohesion. Children improved their enjoyment of practicing exercise, and their relatives improved their well-being and body mass index. More than these important results, participants strongly enjoyed and recognised the importance of the maintenance of the activities.