EuroFIT is a unique lifestyle program that helps men, aged 30 to 65 years, with overweight to improve their lifestyle and health by leveraging their passion for football. Participants, who are supporters of professional football clubs, work on their lifestyle in a fun and engaging way in a group for 12 weeks on the grounds of their favorite club, such as ADO Den Haag, Arsenal, FC Groningen, Manchester City, PSV and Vitesse. Researchers Hidde van der Ploeg and Femke van Nassau from Amsterdam UMC together with (inter)national colleagues have shown that EuroFIT is effective both in the short and long term. Participants show improvements in their physical activity and dietary habits a year after the program began, resulting in a healthier weight, improved blood profile, and overall well-being. Despite the end of formal research funding, the program continues through collaborations with the Eredivisie (Dutch League) and professional football clubs, demonstrating its lasting impact on health and wellbeing.
The power of connection
For the football fans, EuroFIT is much more than just a lifestyle program. It is delivered over 12 weekly sessions, each lasting 90 minutes, combining classroom discussions with graded physical activity in the context of the football club. The classroom sessions provide participants with a toolbox of behavior change techniques to initiate and sustain long-term lifestyle changes. The physical activity part of the sessions is focused on moderate intensity activities such as walking around the pitch or playing walking football. Participants rate the program with an average score of 8.8 (on a scale of 1-10). Their connection with their football club makes working on their lifestyle at the club enjoyable. Moreover, EuroFIT builds on making new social connections and camaraderie, as participants follow the program together with other men in similar situations. As a result, the program reaches a difficult-to-reach demographic: men, aged 30 to 65 years, with overweight, from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. EuroFIT leverages the power of football to get these men more physically active and eating healthier, thereby contributing to the prevention of disease.
Collaboration and mutual benefit
The program was appealing to the participating football clubs for two key reasons. First, EuroFIT focuses on sustainable behavior change, which proved to be a life-changing event for some men. The football clubs want to help their fans in the fight against unhealthy lifestyles. Second, EuroFIT was proven to be effective in achieving this behavior change, making the program all the more valuable for the clubs. This kind of evidence based practice for the club’s community programs is still rare. The project is evidence based, supported by the Dutch national league (Eredivisie), clubs are jointly trained by Amsterdam UMC staff and collaborate with each other, making it attractive for football clubs to participate.
Impact creation beyond research
Although the research is completed and the funding for the 12-week lifestyle program has ended, van der Ploeg and van Nassau continue to volunteer their efforts for EuroFIT. Van der Ploeg emphasizes that it’s about collaboration and that it’s important to continue assist on the program’s roll out and impact, even after the scientific articles are published. He has seen firsthand how much of a difference EuroFIT can make and believes it would be a waste for the program to be shelved. Fortunately, the Eredivisie agrees with this and has been an important partner in the national coordination of EuroFIT and in keeping professional football clubs involved. However, the joint search for structural funding and implementation has not yet been fruitful. The Dutch system proves to have little room for structural funding for evidence-based disease prevention initiatives. Even though, EuroFIT is the only ‘Overweight intervention’ in the RIVM database ‘Loket Gezondleven’ that is registered at the highest level of evidence for effectiveness. Hence, EuroFIT continues to be very much dependent on local funding within and around individual clubs in combination with the in-kind contributions from the Eredivisie and the Amsterdam UMC research team. Within a researcher's work, there is often no room for this kind of impact creation, so these efforts come from voluntary commitment and often personal time. EuroFIT has influenced many community programs that football clubs run and is currently running at several football clubs, locally funded for a small number of men by for example health insurers, municipalities, and local sponsors.
The future of EuroFIT’s impact
To allow EuroFIT to grow further and make more impact, structural national funding is needed. As the program is currently only being continued on a small scale by local partners, its reach is limited, with only about 15-30 participants per club per season. With national funding, EuroFIT could be rolled out on a larger scale and at more football clubs simultaneously. Additionally, the effectiveness of EuroFIT and its various versions could continue to be monitored. The absence of national funding for a preventive lifestyle program like EuroFIT stems from the fact that the Netherlands is not yet fully prepared to invest heavily in disease prevention. Yet, with the ageing of our population and the increasing pressure on our care system it seems paramount to focusing on lifestyle related disease prevention is crucial, especially now.
Do’s and don’ts to create impact from your research
Do’s:
- Make sure your research aims align with key questions that practice needs to have answered
- Think about and work towards future implementation and roll out from day one of your research
- Learn from previous experiences from policy, practice and research
- Collaborate closely with end-users and policy and practice partners
Don’t:
- Stay in your ivory tower and decide what is good for practice only based on research without the involvement of practice and policy
- Think that evidence of (cost-)effectiveness will be sufficient for future implementation
- Try to reinvent the wheel