Health

Health education has, in a very short time, become part of our social and personal priorities, both due to the need to lead healthier lifestyles, which avoid diseases and prolong our lives as long as possible, also minimising costs for the health system and to promote a quality of life within everyone's reach.

The reality is still quite different, however. Despite existing concerns, a global health crisis is revealed, caused by different factors: a sedentary lifestyle or an inadequate diet, waiting for new technology to produce “miracle cures”; not giving importance to prevention because there are remedies to cure us; investing in centres which solve our health problems, instead of promoting health; the existence of diseases (cancer, traffic accidents, heart diseases...) due to the lack of healthy lifestyles, etc.

The World Health Organisation, in its study group on Quality of Life, has defined it as “the perception of an individual of their life situation, placed in the context of their culture and value systems, in relation to their objectives, expectations, standards and concerns”.

As we see, 'quality of life’ is a very heterogeneous, ambiguous and general concept that refers to different variables: from social or community characteristics to physical and mental aspects. Hence the importance of taking into account for the design of programmes in different areas the social and cultural dimension, recognising individual and collective responsibility for healthy behaviour.

We will focus our research on studying the contributions that sport and regular physical activity offer to the well-being and quality of life of people, taking into account the personal but also community characteristics of the different groups.