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Background: Given the benefits of participating in sport, sports clubs have been recognised as health promoting organizations. To examine health-promotion activities in Finnish sports clubs, Kokko et al. developed a set of standards for health-promoting sports clubs (HPSC). Objective: The present study extends this line of research, by (1) measuring coaches' perceptions of health promotion activities in French sports clubs and comparing them to earlier Finnish results, (2) measuring coaches' perceptions of the health-promotion aims of sports clubs and (3) examining the links between HPSC and coaches' self-determined motivation. Methods: Coaches (N = 125) completed a modified version of the HPSC questionnaire and a scale assessing their motivation to coach. Results: Coaches perceived French and Finnish sports clubs as fairly health promoting, but with wide variability between clubs. In both countries, sports clubs scores showed the same patterns: high scores for "ideology" and "environment" activities, and low scores for "policies," "practices" and "partnership". Coaches' perceptions of clubs' aims also followed the same pattern, but with higher scores for each dimension, meaning that coaches considered health promotion as a relevant aim for sports clubs. Finally, controlling for demographic variables, the HPSC index and sub-indices were related to coaches' self-determined motivation. Conclusion: This study strengthens the previous findings for health promotion in the setting of sports clubs and the positive role of these activities on coaches' motivation to coach.

Aims: Insufficient physical activity (PA) is one of the largest public health challenges of our time and requires a multisectoral public-health response. PA recommendations state that all children and adolescents should accumulate at least 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA) daily and carry out vigorous PA (VPA) three times weekly. While participation in sports club activities is known to enhance the probability of reaching the recommended overall PA level, less is known about the contribution of sports club participation to VPA, and few cross-national comparisons have been carried out. The purpose of this paper is to study whether participation in sports club activities is associated with meeting the overall PA and VPA recommendations among children and adolescents across six European countries, namely Belgium (Flanders), Czech Republic, Finland, France, Ireland and Sweden. Methods: Analyses were carried out on existing self-reported national data sets using descriptive statistics and logistic regression. Results: Results indicate that approximately two-thirds of children and adolescents take part in sports club activities in the given countries. Sports club participants were more likely to meet the overall PA recommendations (OR 2.4–6.4) and VPA recommendation (OR 2.8–5.0) than non-participants. Conclusions: The extent to which overall PA and/or VPA is gained through sports club participation versus other settings needs to be further studied. Nonetheless, it can be argued that sports clubs have an important position in PA promotion for younger populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]