Scale-up and scale-out of a gender-sensitized weight management and healthy living program delivered to overweight men via professional sports clubs: the wider implementation of Football Fans in Training (FFIT)

Abstract

Increasing prevalence of obesity poses challenges for public health. Men have been under-served by weight management programs, highlighting a need for gender-sensitized programs which can be embedded into routine practice or adapted for new settings/populations, to accelerate the process of implementing programs which are successful and cost-effective under research conditions. To address gaps in examples of how to bridge the research to practice gap, we describe the scale-up and scale-out of Football Fans in Training (FFIT), a weight management and healthy living program in relation to two implementation frameworks. The paper presents the development, evaluation and scale-up of FFIT, mapped onto the PRACTIS guide; outcomes in scale-up deliveries and the scale-out of FFIT through programs delivered in other contexts (other countries, professional sports, target groups, public health focus). FFIT has been scaled-up through a single-license franchise model in over 40 UK professional football clubs to 2019 (and 30 more from 2020) and scaled-out into football and other sporting contexts in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, England and other European countries. The successful scale-up and scale-out of FFIT demonstrates that, with attention to cultural constructions of masculinity, public health interventions can appeal to men and support them in sustainable lifestyle change.