Sports-based active recreation for children living in marginalised neighbourhoods: a life course and settings-based approach for reducing inequality in health

The rising global burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) amongst the lowest social classes in society has heightened the awareness of the necessity for primary risk prevention programs in marginalized neighborhoods. One important factor in lowering the risk of many NCDs is the promotion of physical activity (PA).
Viewing this problem through a life course perspective and taking a risk population approach points to the solution of making sustainable changes with children and young people that belong to marginalized groups in society. This is proposed to be achieved through programs that facilitate long-term (PA) behavior changes in children and adolescents living in marginalized neighborhoods with the aim of reducing NCD risk factors and disease onset in later-life. Ample empirical evidence supports that extrinsic motives for participating in physical activities, such as increasing health, are insufficient when long term participation is the goal.
In this debate paper, we argue that interventions with the aim of reducing the social gradient in health should adopt a settings-perspective and include activities which hold both broad health and sustainable participation potentials. Here, we advocate that basing such interventions on sports-based active recreation hold several advantages. To argue these advantages a comprehensive argument model is presented demonstrating why interventions that provide sport-based active recreation activities are an especially beneficial direction for future interventions and intervention-based research.
The research is funded by the Novo Nordisk Foundation (NNF17SH0026986).