Sport as a platform for health promotion

As the Women’s Euro 2022 tournament grips the nation with the prospect of it ‘coming home’, the potential for using sport as a platform for health is a hot topic.

The aptly named ‘Grasping the Opportunity’ pre-tournament Impact Report highlights the chance to promote the perception of women’s football but to also provide opportunities for more than 500,000 opportunities for women and girls to participate and engage with football in the host cities.

The city of Brighton was chosen as a host city for the tournament and the University of Brighton had the honour of being the only university to be chosen as a host training venue.

Speaking to the FA, Councillor Phélim Mac Cafferty, leader of Brighton & Hove City Council said: “The UEFA Women’s EURO 2022 tournament brings a fantastic, major sporting event to our city for all to enjoy and we are proud to be a part of it.

“It also provides us with a unique and vital opportunity to raise the profile of women’s football in the city, and to encourage people to come together, get active and improve our health.”

We’re delighted that the legacy and social contribution via the health and wellbeing benefits of engaging in a healthy lifestyle through football is also recorded in the Brighton & Hove’s Inspiring positive change in Brighton and Hove report. From the World Health Organization’s Sports and Health Programme, to the UK’s ‘All our Health’ about preventing ‘physical inactivity’ – the links between movement/sports/ PE and public health are becoming clearer and stronger.

The Health Promotion MSc course leader said: “This is exactly the kind of health promoting initiative we examine and discuss in our MSc. If you’ve studied sports or PE at UG and want to get involved in working with the health aspects of physical activity, the MSc in Health Promotion could be the ideal for equipping you to straddle the health-sports world.

“With its mandatory community placement module you will get practical experience as well as theoretical public health knowledge. Many of our UK-based students find enrolling on the MSc is a speedy route into employment in a wide range of health wellbeing and community activity roles as public health practitioners.”

Health promotion is wide ranging discipline equipping students to work as public health practitioners, or similar roles with a health or wellbeing component. It is an ideal follow on programme for students with degrees in sports, psychology, marketing, bioscience or health related topics. Find out more about the course on the University of Brighton website.

For an informal chat about the course get in touch with the course leader Sarah Kehoe S.Kehoe@brighton.ac.uk

Scholarships worth 20% of tuition fees will be awarded to students who already hold a University of Brighton academic award and who wish to study at postgraduate level at the university.