Reports from Ministries on Promoting Sport and Physical Activity in Finland
Only a small number of Finnish people engage in sufficient physical activity to keep them healthy. Physical inactivity not only affects individuals’ wellbeing and quality of life but also has large-scale impacts on different sectors of society (including social and health care expenditure, work ability and military performance).
Physical inactivity is a multidimensional societal phenomenon which does not respect the boundaries of administrative branches. The central government consists of 12 ministries, including the agencies and institutes subordinate to them. In practice, the decisions and actions of all ministries influence the population’s engagement in sport and physical activity. Should we really wish to intervene in the population’s physical inactivity, social, health care, education, environmental and transport policy instruments alike will be needed.
The National Sports Council has prepared the Reports from Ministries on Promoting Sport and Physical Activity in cooperation with the different ministries. The reports describe each ministry’s interest, objectives, measures, resources, indicators, key legislation and essential development areas related to promoting sport and physical activity. An attempt has been made to use concepts compatible with each administrative branch’s specific terminology in the reports. Responsibility for the information and views presented in the reports rests with the National Sports Council. The reports were published in June 2019.
The reports seek to build understanding and knowledge of different administrative branches’ actions and interests in promoting sport and physical activity. Additionally, they create preconditions for the National Sports Council’s increasingly extensive tasks of evaluating government ́s measures related to sport and physical activity.