Tuesday 4 September

Media release: Confederation of Australian Sport (CAS)
CAS calls for a new approach in the fight against obesity

31 August 2007

In a report on ABC Radio’s PM program yesterday, Dr Evan Atlantis from the University of Sydney Department of Exercise and Sport Science asserted that only approximately 25 per cent of Australians met national physical activity guidelines. When coupled with dietary guidelines a staggering 95% of Australians were not meeting the physical activity guidelines nor eating the appropriate servings of fruit and vegetables per day. This is despite over twenty years of health messages and health promotion conducted by State and Federal governments.

The Confederation of Australian Sport (CAS), Australia’s peak body for sport, believes that the inability to make in-roads into the obesity crisis is due to the narrow response by Government and the health sector and the lack of an integrated approach that, to date, has only marginally utilised one of the best weapons against sedentary disease, sport.

President of CAS, Michael Sparks said in a statement today “Sport provides physical activity in an atmosphere of friendship, camaraderie and community. People are more likely to head out in the rain to a play a match because they don’t want to let their mates down; or go cycling on a Saturday morning after a big week at work because they enjoy drinking coffee with the group at the end of the ride. Sport is far more effective in getting and keeping people active than just telling them they may develop diabetes in ten years if they don’t change their lifestyle”.

As part of the 2007 Federal Election Sport Industry Platform, CAS has called for the establishment of a Joint Obesity Advisory Board with leading members from the sport industry, educators and the health sector to conduct a comprehensive review of the way the obesity crisis is being approached. CAS asserts the review must, as a priority, tackle the heart, mind and body issues associated with obesity among all Australians. CAS believes a fully integrated approach is the only solution to solving this growing crisis.

Dr Atlantis states that physical inactivity among adults is estimated to represent approximately 2.5 per cent of total annual health expenditure. Based on annual health expenditures of over $60 billion for the periods 2000 to 2004, the economic burden of physical inactivity among Australian adults was approximately $2 billion per annum.

In a recent letter to CAS, Finance Minister, Nick Minchin stated that the Federal Government was spending almost $300 million on sport in the 2007/2008 financial year. CAS notes that 70% of this funding is spent on elite programs. CAS believes that while elite programs are an important aspect of our nation’s sporting landscape, participation programs for sport are significantly under funded. CAS believes this lack of investment strikes at the very heart of our much lauded national identity as a sporting nation.

A recent report in the New England Journal of Medicine by Nicholas Christakis of Harvard Medical School suggested that obesity is “socially contagious,” spreading from person to person in a social network. The study found that if a person you consider a friend becomes obese, your own chances of becoming obese increase by 57 percent.

In response to the call by Dr Atlantis for a further $200 million to be spent on public health programs, Federal Health Minister, Tony Abbott stated on the ABC’s PM program that “There can be all the good messages in the world. There can be all these exercise programs on offer but in the end people have got to want to take them. And if they do want to take them, they probably don't need extra Government help. If they don't want to take them, all the Government help in the world may not make them.”

Michael Sparks responds by saying “This is a straight out admission that our current approach isn’t working. As the Harvard study shows, the motivation factors to get people active have to involve friends and family. You play sport with your friends. You play sport with your family, whether it’s a round of golf or a game of cricket in the backyard. There is a role for sport to play in reinvigorating the nation’s passion for physical activity and to date this has been largely overlooked.”

To address this, Sparks went on to say “To tackle obesity we have to start with our children and re introduce physical education and sport into schools so that the adults of tomorrow have skills they can draw on to lead an active healthy lifestyle throughout their entire life. We need to link these programs to the national sporting system and we need to provide programs through sporting organisations for mature age Australians. As a nation we should also be supporting opportunities for adults to participate in sport through forums such as Masters Games.” Sparks stated that “Sport is not a silver bullet for the obesity crisis but it is part of the solution and, to date, there has been little engagement with the sport sector on the obesity issue.”

CAS believes that the Harvard report is further evidence that the nation needs to focus on healthy communities, built in part around sport and sporting clubs, where we can engage and deliver messages on healthy lifestyle rather than relying on advertising campaigns as the primary Federal health promotion strategy.

Other initiatives that are part of the Sport Industry Platform in the fight against obesity include the call to introduce a physical activity tax rebate for sporting club membership fees for parents and carers of school age children and supplementary funding for National Sporting Organisations to develop programs for mature aged Australians.

For a full copy of the CAS 2007 Federal Election Sport Industry Platform — click here —

For more information contact:
Lachlan Clark, General Manager Confederation of Australian Sport (0419) 259 712 Lachlan.Clark@CASevents.com	Michael Sparks President