As a follow up to the successful Healthy Islands through Sport (HITS) forum, which gathered the senior officials of 14 Pacific Island countries in Brisbane earlier this year, a workshop was recently conducted in Canberra.

HITS, an initiative of the Australian Government in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC), was founded to generate discussion on how sport could be used to tackle non-communicative diseases (NCDs) such as obesity and diabetes amongst those in the Pacific region.

Well attended by over 20 delegates, the workshop was an opportunity for a broader range of stakeholders and organisations with an on-the-ground understanding of operations in the Pacific to provide input on how health outcomes can be best achieved through sport. The approach being taken has been influenced by AusAID’s program design process which requires a clear and robust ‘theory of change’ as the first step in developing a delivery strategy.

The workshop achieved its key objectives to build on the momentum of the HITS forum to develop a strong theory of change model and determine the necessary preconditions or stepping stones to achieve the broader goal of reducing the prevalence of NCDs in the Pacific through sport.

Those in attendance included Dr Viliami Puloka, Section Head of Healthy Pacific Lifestyle within the SPC, who was positive about the potential for change. ‘This is a continuation of the work we started earlier but with more focus on the theory of change,’ he mentioned at a break out session. He also highlighted the importance of the collaborative approach which has been taken.

‘There’s no doubt in my mind that the assistance that we have from the Australian Government through the Australian Sports Commission has revitalised and built on what the Pacific people aspire to and are already good at - but within a more organised, inclusive and targeted structure.’

Representatives from AusAID, the ASC, multi-sectoral agencies (WHO, SPC, Red Cross), Pacific ministries of health and ministries responsible for sport, ASOP technical assistance partners, Pacific regional sport bodies and NSOs were also present.

The HITS initiative is a component of the $1 million expansion of the existing ASOP initiative which aims to tackle the widespread problem of non-communicable diseases in the Pacific which directly relate to poor diet and lifestyle.