Across the western world, men have a lower life expectancy than women and have higher death rates for most of the leading causes of death and at all ages. Effective health promotion initiatives tend to attract older men with significant health risk (Men’s Sheds and Men on the Move) while younger men, who are conspicuously absent from such initiatives, are more likely to engage in health damaging behaviours leading to poorer health outcomes. The Football Cooperative (FC) initiative provides social ‘pick up football’ games for men aimed improving their overall health and wellbeing. Notably, the FC initiative has been successful at engaging a younger male cohort. Since 2021, FC has been the subject of a feasibility study for scale up and an implementation science study to develop an implementation strategy to replicate FC for the benefit of population health. From Q2 2025, the FC initiative will be scaled over a 3-year period [Y1 12 sites; Y2 30 sites; Y3 60 sites]. Adopting a hybrid model, this study aims to conduct, in parallel:
An experimental repeated measures randomised controlled trial within a social return on investment (SROI) framework to a) determine the social value of the FC games at scale, b) the biopsychosocial health impact the FC games at scale, c) the reach of FC games at scale and d) the health economic impact of FC games at scale, and
An implementation science approach to investigate the processes of replicating the FC initiative at scale i.e. identifying implementation barriers and facilitators, and addressing potential barriers to implementation thereby ensuring fidelity and equitable benefit for participants across sites.
The findings from this study will inform fidelity of delivery when scaled nationally. It is also proposed to translate the findings internationally in partnership with Football Associations across Europe.