The Irish Life GAA Healthy Club Programme is delivering health and wellbeing benefits worth €50M to Ireland, according to the findings of an independent Social Return on Investment (SROI) evaluation conducted by Just Economics and published at Croke Park yesterday.
The research highlights that €19 of value is generated for every €1 of financial, volunteer, and in-kind investment in the Irish Life GAA Healthy Club Programme, a return ratio of 19:1.
The programme is celebrating its tenth year this year and has risen from an original pilot of 16 clubs in 2014 to 447 clubs and 1,912 volunteers helping to deliver it in 2023.
It supports GAA clubs in becoming hubs for health by delivering to their members and community opportunities that reflect the national policy agenda for sport, physical activity, mental health, and preventative health.
It has been supported from the early stages by Irish Life, and they have been joined along the way by support from Healthy Ireland, the HSE, the National Office for Suicide Prevention and the Tomar Trust.
Those volunteers contributed 102,292 hours annually, valued at €1.1m using the 2022 minimum wage.
They organised 2,389 activities accessed 184,598 times by 92,299 individuals, a really deep reach into communities.
Activities are spread across six areas – physical activity (44%), community development (24%), diversity and inclusion (9%), mental fitness (10%), healthy eating (7%), and substance use/gambling awareness (6%).
If clubs are looking for effective and proven ways of investing the McManus family windfall which drops in synchronicity with this report, the Healthy Clubs platform is where they should be looking first.
The impact of the programmes shows significant health and wellbeing gains for participants, including:
• increases in physical activity (10-25%)
• adopting of healthier behaviours (40%)
• starting new hobbies (17%) and friendships (51%)
• improvements in life satisfaction, connectedness to other people and the community
In 2021, the GAA commissioned Just Economics to carry out a SROI analysis of the Irish Life GAA Healthy Clubs Programme. The evaluation followed a mixed-methods study design based on the SROI framework. SROI is a methodology that compares the social, economic, and environmental value of a programme with its cost to estimate the social return.
The evaluation inferred benefits of €620,000 to our health services from changes in service use because of individuals’ participation in the Programme.
For the HSE/NOSP, which contributes €140,000 of funding, the return from these savings is 4.4:1.
The Irish Life GAA Healthy Clubs Programme also brings a range of benefits to the GAA and clubs participating in the programme, including greater involvement by participants (joining their club, taking their children to training or attending games), recruiting new members and volunteers, and improved reputation/goodwill.
Demographic data shows that the programme engages an equal mix of men and women and is attracting participation from outside the GAA core base.
Participating clubs reported:
• beneficial changes in policies and procedures such as smoke and vape-free venues.
• healthy eating at training and after games.
• increases in the proportion of clubs that consider their club to be welcoming, representative of the community and well-utilised.
• Some improvement in the ease at which volunteers are recruited/retained (although both remain a challenge).
For volunteers, 89% were satisfied with their volunteering experience and there was an indicated increase in life satisfaction.
They also report higher levels of community connectedness and connection to other people than at baseline.
25% of volunteers had no previous involvement with the GAA and many started out as participants, suggesting that the programme is operating as a gateway for new volunteers.
“What the Irish Life GAA Healthy Clubs Programme shows is that the right activities, targeted in the right way, can get people taking part in physical activity that is so important for their health and wellbeing,” said report author Dr Eilis Lawlor of Just Economics.
Recommendations within the report include increased funding and scaling up of the HCP, with targeted support to enable the programme target more minority groups including BAME communities (Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnicities).
“The results of this independent research into the impact of our Healthy Club Programme is a positive reinforcement of the value that we have long known was provided by our clubs to our communities,” said GAA President Larry McCarthy.
“Irish Life is proud to be celebrating 10 years of the Irish Life GAA Healthy Clubs partnership and the incredible impact this programme has achieved during this time,” added Irish Life CEO Declan Bolger.
“At Irish Life, we help people build better futures and through our partnership with the GAA Healthy Clubs we know that the entire community benefits from being involved with skills, information and guidance on how to improve health. Now more than ever, small changes can have a big impact on health, whether that is making healthier food choices or taking more steps each day – everything helps.”
“This is an example of Healthy Ireland in action at community level. This research is to be welcomed as it clearly demonstrates the benefits of investing in health and wellbeing which is our core business in Healthy Ireland,” said Matthew Doyle the Head of Healthy Ireland.
