Sport for Tertiary Prevention

If you take a quick look at the new Sport England Strategy, or the NHS Long-term View, or at any impact strategy in the field really, you’ll see that prevention is high up the list. “Physical Activity for Health” – that’s what they call it and essentially what they’re saying here is that in medical terms we expect the ‘intervention’ to be sport/movement, rather than drugs and medicalised care.

But is this realistic?  And do sports organisations know what to do?

Well, let me tell you what I’ve done with UK Wallball and I hope these lessons will carry over to other sporting bodies and community organisations. But first, check out this video if you haven’t seen it already, for an intro:

As a doctor I’m pretty interested in neurology and neuro-rehab is something that needs more attention. If you have a stroke – a sudden blood clot or bleed in the brain – it can wipe out your movement, speech, vision and/or cognition. The NHS can afford to give you about 6 weeks of intensive care and rehab but unfortunately it can’t afford too much more – and yet your rehabilitation is a process which can take months, years or even the rest of your life.

Recognising this, we now want rehab to continue in the community. The problem here is that we are reliant on volunteers and group exercises. Sports are now being funded to address issues like this but I worry there’s a lack of medical understanding here (just like I see there’s a lack of community understanding from the medical side).

So with Wallball I worked with a few Stroke Association groups in Newham, East London. I introduced Wallball as an ‘intervention’ by breaking it down into its component parts:

-          Hands and feet

-          Communication

-          Coordination

That’s it.

I designed a medical trial around this – a feasibility study looking at the impact of Wallball over time and measuring the results with some validated stroke recovery tests both before and after our work. The awesome thing is that Wallball works. A simple activity that’s fun to do and get’s the body moving in a more natural way than prescribed physio movements. The balls can be taken home and the stroke survivors can play with their families and keep going in their own time.

The key here is that sport has been used as a tool to gamify rehabilitation, and we’ve done the medical research alongside it to prove it works and, down the line, to justify health sector expenditure rather than just dishing it out blindly.

I believe all organisations should think along these lines because truly valid approaches to rehab can make a massive difference both to people’s lives but also to how we integrate medical care with community.

Thanks for reading. If you’re interested in this just drop me an email.

Here’s the UK Wallball video with more interviews with our amazing stroke survivors.