VicHealth’s Healthy communities integrated theme supports our role in creating supportive places where people live, learn, work and play to improve health outcomes for all Victorians.
Healthy Sporting Environments
VicHealth’s Healthy Sporting Environments program supported over 250 community sporting clubs in rural and regional Victoria to become healthier and more welcoming environments between 2012 and 2015.Through this initiative, the nine Victorian Regional Sports Assemblies worked with regional, rural and remote sporting clubs to reduce the impact of risk factors within community sports clubs and develop healthier, more welcoming and inclusive clubs.
The program supported clubs to make changes to their club facilities and policies in the areas of: responsible use of alcohol; healthy eating; reducing tobacco use; inclusion, safety and support; injury prevention and management; and UV protection.
This project also built the evidence base for health promotion interventions in a sports club setting. The pioneering Healthy Sporting Environments program provides a better understanding of how health promotion can be weaved through grassroots sporting clubs.
VicHealth will continue to use the learnings from Healthy Sporting Environments to build community awareness and demand for healthy sporting clubs by disseminating information and key findings of the program and ongoing engagement with key partners.
Health Sporting Environments program
Sons of the West program
Run by the Western Bulldogs AFL Club, the Sons of the West (SOTW) program is a men’s health program that targets all men who live, work or recreate in the local government areas of Melton, Wyndham, Hobsons Bay, Maribyrnong and Brimbank, with the aim of contributing to the health of communities in the west of Melbourne.In the second year of this partnership, VicHealth has worked with the Western Bulldogs to help it adopt best health promotion practice to underpin all of its SOTW operations. We also support the club to measure the benefits of the program so that it can be sustained and potentially translated to other football clubs and leagues.
Back to VicHealth Highlights 2014-15
