Soccer can help young men in poor communities develop healthy lifestyle habits, writes Dr Jason Bantjes and Prof Mark Tomlinson of the Department of Psychology in an opinion piece published by The Conversation on Monday (12 September 2016)

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Innovative health intervention: Eyethu Soccer League

Young men living in low resource communities are at risk of engaging in a range of health compromising behaviours, such as harmful substance use and unsafe sexual practices.  Their well-being is further compromised if they are unemployed as this increases the likelihood of criminal activity and gangsterism.  Young men in SA are not only more likely to be the perpetrators of violence but they are also more likely to be the victims of violence and to sustain serious injuries in physical fights and accidents. Young men in SA are four times more likely to die by suicide than women.

Conventional health interventions to address these concerns typically make use of strategies such as one-on-one counselling and the dissemination of health information in the form of psycho-education.  These kinds of approaches, which are usually delivered in clinics, are not always effective in reaching young men.  It is this problem that has prompted researchers from the Psychology Department at Stellenbosch University and the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) to implement the Eyethu Soccer League. The intention is to see if soccer can be used to "pull" or engage men, rather than trying to "push" public health strategies and health messages into their lives.

The Eyethu Soccer League is part of an innovative health intervention which aims to investigate how sport might be used to engage young men living in low resource Cape Town communities in order to promote their well-being and empower them with the skills they need to gain employment.

Community members from Mfuleni, Harare and Ndlovini gathered for the launch of the Eyethu Soccer League this weekend in Khayelitsha. The league currently consists of six teams of young men between the ages of 18 and 29. Over the course of the next year more teams will be added to the league as other young men are recruited to join. 

The hope of the Eyethu Soccer League is to use sport as a context in which young men can acquire and practice habits fundamental to maintaining health and securing sustainable employment.  These habits include consistent daily routines, staying drug and alcohol free, forming healthy and supportive relationships, interacting in a pro-social manner and being able to solve problems, set goals, resolve conflicts and honour commitments.

Conventional wisdom suggests that sport has the potential to promote personal development, teach life skills, engender feelings of belonging and contribute to community and nation building. The empirical evidence to support these lofty assertions about the power of sport for personal and economic development, is however more than a little sketchy.

There is good evidence showing that regular physical activity can have a host of positive effects on physical health. Organised sport can also promote self-esteem and enhance psychological well-being by reducing anxiety, alleviating symptoms of depression and enhancing emotional regulation. Researchers have also shown that sport can promote social development by fostering a sense of belonging and promoting feelings of agency and self-determination. 

The research supporting the positive effects of sport on physical and psychological health have led to claims that sport can be used as a vehicle for economic and community development. Sport has been heralded as a way to address socio-economic and political problems like unemployment, substance misuse, interpersonal violence and gangsterism, although the empirical evidence to support these claims is at best thin and the precise mechanisms by which sport supposedly achieves these goals is yet to be firmly established.  

 The Eyethu Soccer League is an attempt to establish, through the use of a well-designed cluster randomized controlled trial, if participation in organised sport can be used to teach young men life skills and promote pro-social behaviours, such as reduced alcohol and drug use, safe sexual practices and curb inter-personal violence. The project is the brain child of Professor Mary Jane Rotheram-Borus (Psychiatry Department of UCLA) and Professor Mark Tomlinson (Psychology Department, Stellenbosch University). The project is being managed and implemented by Dr Jackie Stewart, Mr Andile Mayekiso and Dr Jason Bantjes of Stellenbosch University and has been funded by the National Institute of Drug Abuse in the USA.

To date 270 young men from 3 communities in Khayelitsha have been recruited into the Eyethu Soccer League. In time 7 more communities will be added and more than 1200 young men will be enlisted and closely monitored to document the impact of their participation.

• Photo: Young men playing soccer at the launch of the Eyethu Soccer League.