Sport and Health: Exploring the Current State of Play

It is a common assumption that sport is good for us and that participation in sport embodies public health benefits. With sport being increasingly used to deliver public health interventions worldwide, this book critically examines the rationale and evidence for sport as a public health policy tool. Featuring contributions from the United Kingdom, United States, Europe and Australia, it sheds new light on an emerging field of research which has significant implications for public health across the globe.

Each chapter looks at the effectiveness of sport interventions across the lifespan for biological, psychological and social benefits, including those that utilise a settings-based approach to health promotion such as schools and professional sport clubs. Drawing on cutting-edge research which examines policy and practice at community and elite levels, this book addresses key topics such as education, engaging children and young adults, mental health, sport sponsorship and volunteering.

Sport and Health: Exploring the Current State of Play is important reading for all students, scholars and policy makers with an interest in the sociology of sport, physical activity and public health.

Daniel Parnell is a Senior Lecturer in Business Management at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. Dan is a collegiate scholar with a growing reputation for current, policy-relevant, empirically-rich research in areas that closely connect with sport business and management, who engages closely with the sport industry and can connect across multi-disciplinary areas and research programmes. Dan manages a number of research projects involving managing change and project evaluation using both quantitative and qualitative research methods regionally and internationally. He currently works with a number of professional sport clubs and national governing bodies in England and internationally. He has worked with the Premier League, Football League, Football Foundation (United Kingdom's largest sports charity) and the International Olympic Committee on research with policy makers, commissioners, chief executive officers, managers, coaches and participants. Currently, Dan leads the research on a unique Masters in Sport Directorship executive education programme, coordinates a global platform for football researchers as a founder member (‘The Football Collective') and is the Research Director for a platform to share community sport research with policy makers and practitioners (‘Connect Sport’)

Peter Krustrup is Professor of Sport and Health Sciences at the University of Southern Denmark and an Honorary Visiting Professor at Exeter University, UK. Peter has authored 225 original research articles, with a total of 9,000 citations, and has got an H-index of 49. His three main research areas are: muscle physiology, human performance and health effects of sports. Currently, Peter is continuing his pioneering work on the fitness and health effects of football and other team sports. His research includes investigations of the cardiovascular, metabolic and musculoskeletal effects of team sports compared with other types of physical activity (PA), and the potential of team sports for preventing and treating lifestyle diseases. He achieved the UEFA Pro Licence in 2017 and worked as assistant coach for the Danish Women’s National Team that won a bronze medal at Euro 2013. He is an editor for the European Journal of Applied Physiology and the British Journal of Sports Medicine and has acted as guest editor for two Football for Health special issues of the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports. He was chairman of the organising committee for the World Congress of Science in Football in 2015 (WCSF, 2015) and the Copenhagen Consensus Conference 2016 on Children, Youth and Physical Activity. He has received several research dissemination awards, including the Men’s Health Award and the Faculty of Science Media Award