Promoting active communities
Increasing access to health services
Incidence of non-communicable diseases which include cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, cancer, and respiratory diseases have risen dramatically in Uganda and they all share the same risk factors which are unhealthy diet, physical inactivity, harmful use of alcohol and tobacco use. Our Center focuses on providing services for people to adopt healthy lifestyle to prevent chronic diseases. To increase access to NCDs care, the Center offers screening services for diabetes, cancer and hypertension, provides health education to reduce people’s risk of developing NCDs, recommends community-based groups for physical exercise, and refers patients to health-care professionals.
The purpose of the Sports Development Programme is to ‘Increased participation of children in schools and young people in communities in regular, quality sport and physical activities run by qualified sports facilitators.’ The program is designed to encourage the whole community to get active. Regular sport and physical activities are conducted by local facilitators for all groups in participating communities, including: children, youth and adults, women, boys and girls. Sports clinics are conducted mostly in schools for teachers who are trained in various sports including football, netball and volleyball. The programme empowers teachers with new skills in running sport and physical activity programs in their respective schools. In addition to this, potential social development outcomes by the program include:
Improved health of participants.
Increased skill levels of youth.
Reduced social problems.
Improved community cohesion.