ABSTRACT
The Chief Medical Officer’s report confirms that participation in regular physical activity in line with the recommended guidelines can provide an array of substantial health benefits.1 Yet fewer than 39% of men and 29% of women met the current recommendations for an active lifestyle.2 Given these low levels of physical activity participation, concerns prevail over the health and well-being of the UK population, along with thoughts as to how best to intervene. Professional football clubs are being deployed as channels for connecting with communities over their health and physical activity3 including those hard-to-engage groups, with health improvement schemes.4 This extends to those individuals who encounter substantial barriers for engaging in health behaviour change and in doing so, do not/would not make use of traditional health care services.5 Given the importance of deploying robust evaluation and monitoring approaches for identifying programme impact, anxieties remain over the extent to which football-based health improvement schemes are being
evaluated.6 Failing to evaluate the effect of such interventions raises the possibility that their impact on public health will be lost.
