Interventions implemented through sporting organisations for promoting healthy behaviour or improving health outcomes (Review)

Hodder RK, O'Brien KM, Al-Gobari M, Flatz A, Borchard A, Klerings I, Clinton-McHarg T, Kingsland M, von Elm E (2025)

Cochrane - DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD012170.pub2.

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Evidence Categories

• Care setting: Community setting
• Population group: Men
• Population group: Adults living with overweight and obesity
• Intervention: Intra-/Inter-personal: Multicomponent programme in-person
• Outcome: Healthy Eating: Sugar-sweetened drinks intake
• Outcome: Healthy Eating: Fruit and veg intake

Type of Evidence

Systematic Review

Aims

The authors state:

• "Primary: to assess the benefits and harms of interventions implemented through sporting organisations to promote healthy behaviours (including physical activity, healthy diet) or reduce health risk behaviours (including alcohol consumption, tobacco use)."
• "Secondary: to assess the benefits and harms of these interventions to promote health outcomes (e.g. weight), other health-related behaviours (e.g. help-seeking behaviour) or health-related knowledge; to determine whether benefits and harms diHer based on the characteristics of the interventions, including target population and intervention duration; to assess unintended adverse consequences of sporting organisation interventions; and to describe their cost or cost-effectiveness."

Findings

The authors state:

• "We included 20 trials (42 trial arms, 8179 participants) conducted in high-income countries.”
• “Trials were conducted in Australia, the USA, the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, Portugal, and multiple European countries (the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Norway and Portugal)."
• "Six RCTs used interventions combining advice on healthy diet with physical activity aimed at helping overweight men to lose weight."
• "Sporting organisation interventions versus control may have a moderate positive effect on fruit and vegetable consumption, equivalent to a score increase of 1.25 points on a 12-point scale for frequency of fruit and vegetable consumption (SMD 0.50, 95% CI 0.35 to 0.65; I2 = 0%; 5 trials, 1402 participants; low-certainty evidence)."
• "Sporting organisation interventions versus control may reduce sugary drink consumption (equivalent to a reduction of sugary drink consumption by 0.8 times per day), but the evidence is very uncertain (SMD -0.37, 95% CI -0.64 to -0.10; I2 = 0%; 2 trials, 225 participants; very low-certainty evidence)."

All 6 RCTs were the original Football Fans in Training (FFIT) intervention, developed in the UK to target football supporters, or adaptations to other countries or sports including football in multiple European countries, Canadian Ice hockey, Australian rules football, and New Zealand Rugby.

Conclusions

The authors state:

"Overall, sporting organisation interventions may increase fruit and vegetable consumption. The evidence is very uncertain about whether sporting organisation interventions decrease sugary drink consumption."