The Role of Sport in Health-Related Promotion of Physical Activity

the long version

Enrico Michelini illustrates that sport plays a very marginal role in the contemporary health promotion. This is the main result of the present analysis of national strategies for the promotion of physical activity issued by the health ministries of France, Germany, and Italy. All these health-strategies are rather ambiguous on this subject: They mention sport systematically as an abstract term, but they marginalise it as a medium of health in its traditional-competitive form. As a consequence, while sport has generally been considered healthy over a long period in the past, most health organisations today recommend only moderate physical activity as conducive to good health. The author examines this paradigmatic change in the international discussion about the forms of health-enhancing physical activity through a theoretical framework based on Luhmann’s systems theory.  Contents The Acceptance of Sport in the Health System Defining Health, Physical Activity, Sport, and Their Relationship Health and Sport Systems Relationships between Sport and Health Systems Governance in the Promotion of Physical Activity What Role Do Sport Organizations Have?  Target Groups Researchers and students in the fields of sport science and sport sociology  The Author Enrico Michelini did his doctorate in sport science at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen and in cotutelle with the University of Turin. He is currently a postdoc at the Institute of Sport and Sport Science of the TU Dortmund.