Healthway

Healthway’s grant funding for sports organisations is contingent on healthy policies

Sport organisations are an ideal setting for health promotion, yet this is often challenged by the presence of unhealthy brands and promotion and availability of unhealthy products in canteen environments which counteracts the positive influence sport can have on community health and wellbeing.^1-3 Nationally, there is growing public concern and support for action against the presence of unhealthy brands within sports contexts,^{4, 5} including unhealthy brand promotion.⁶ Many sport organisations struggle to balance sponsorship and community health objectives, often prioritising financial incentives over health outcomes.

Healthway provides funding to organisations which is contingent on them meeting minimum policies related to health – promoting health and reducing the exposure of unhealthy brands, particularly to children and young people. Healthway has long recognised the commercial determinants of health and has used policies to counteract their negative influence.^7-9

The two main policies Healthway uses to create healthy sporting environments are:

• The Healthway Co-Supporters Policy (first adopted in 2004) aims to reduce the promotion of unhealthy brands and minimise the risk that Healthway’s objectives will be undermined by the presence of other supporters (financial or otherwise).¹⁰
• The Healthway Minimum Health Requirements Policy (first adopted in 2009) sets minimum standards for all Healthway funded organisations, ensuring compliance with health promotion priorities.¹¹

Outcomes and Impact

Integration of health into grant funding policies has led to values-based partnerships between Healthway and sporting organisations, aligned with health promotion objectives. Sporting organisations, such as State Sporting Associations, funded by Healthway now have no promotion of unhealthy brands or products. Instead, these organisations actively promote physical activity, healthy eating and mental wellbeing. These successful partnerships highlight the potential to increase integration of health promotion strategies at a sporting organisation level.

In 2013, Healthway commissioned an external review of the co-supporters policy.¹² This review found that overall, the policy was well understood and working well with sport organisations partners.

In addition, research published in 2018 highlighted success factors for the Healthway funding policies. Using stakeholder interviews and expert observational studies, key success factors included the displacement of unhealthy sponsorship and environmental changes that facilitate behavioural change.¹³

An annual review of the co-supporters policy continues to be undertaken internally at Healthway.

Investment and Funding

In 2024 –2025, Healthway provided more than $8 million to support 63 sporting organisations in WA.¹⁴

The time investment required for enforcement of the policy is minimal. However, the following steps do require Healthway staff time.

• Complete declaration at outset with partnered organisations.
• Random audits to ensure organisational compliance with the policy.
• Review by Healthway staff of organisation’s declaration forms for all proposed unhealthy sponsors/partners, against a risk matrix. Some partnerships require the development of risk mitigation strategies.
• Ongoing reminders to organisations of their policy obligations.

Enablers and Lessons Learned

Policy is essential to achieve scalable and sustainable health promoting environments. Healthway’s grant funding has been used as a policy lever to integrate health and wellbeing into sporting organisations, with great success. Without the funding lever to embed the policy, for many organisations, creating healthy environments may be too challenging. Finding policy levers to create scalable and sustainable change is key.

Exploring opportunities to strengthen the minimum health requirements policy may be key to ensure Healthway continues to grow impactful partnerships e.g. price-based policies.¹²