Scientific evidence of the benefits of sports and physical activity continues to grow, encompassing physical, mental, and social health. However, many factors stand in the way of participation. About fifteen experts in the field have contributed to this issue and explain how various stakeholders (local governments, sports clubs and federations, civic organizations, etc.) can promote health by encouraging society as a whole to combat sedentary lifestyles and “move more” through supportive environments and conditions.

Engaging in regular physical activity from an early age to build physical, physiological, and psychosocial capital

The COVID-19 health crisis highlights this: regular physical and sports activities help build the physical, physiological, and psychosocial capital of all individuals; it is one of the essential antidotes contributing to the prevention of this type of pandemic, as it reduces sedentary lifestyles and the prevalence of chronic diseases. Cardiovascular diseases, respiratory failure, and diabetes associated with obesity were significantly overrepresented among emergency department admissions in 2020 and 2021 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, regular physical activity improves mental health.

The risk—exacerbated by the effects of COVID-19—in a “screen-based” society that is becoming increasingly “service-oriented,” particularly with the growth of remote services, is that inequalities in access to healthy and active lifestyles will widen even further. Promoting physical activity from an early age therefore appears to be a necessary and largely underutilized tool of public policy, among the most cost-effective solutions.

Individual or group activities: the concept of physical and sports activity in all its forms

A major determinant of health, measured and compared at the national and international levels, physical activity is defined as “any bodily movement produced by skeletal muscle contraction that results in an increase in energy expenditure.” As a result, it encompasses a wide variety of situations (moving around, cleaning, doing DIY, gardening, etc.) and takes place in many settings, outside of structured programs or infrastructure. In its most structured form, it becomes recreational physical activity, which encompasses all competitive and recreational sports that get the body moving. This can be supervised, spontaneous, open to the public or not, and done alone or in a team. Supervised activities are mostly grouped under the term “sport.”

In this issue, several articles highlight the health and economic benefits of physical and sports activity for society as a whole:

• initiatives in Lille centered on cycling,

• a women’s soccer academy in Île-de-France that includes a nutrition component,

• the creation of sports fields at the base of apartment buildings in priority neighborhoods across 25 cities in France,

• promotion of competitive cycling as well as recreational cycling and its use as a mode of transportation by the International Cycling Union,

• promotion of health-focused sports through infrastructure tailored for Swiss citizens (e.g., Yverdon-les-Bains, where all public and community facilities—parks, schoolyards, parking lots—are designed to be used for physical activity “within 5 minutes of home”), etc.

The expertise mobilized, intervention strategies to be adopted by sports clubs, living spaces, and informal education settings to become “health-promoting” venues, as well as recommendations for professionals, are analyzed and summarized. Several articles are thus devoted to soccer, which can serve as an educational lever and a vehicle for learning citizenship. The challenge is indeed to strengthen the societal role of the entire sports ecosystem and to capitalize on sport as a powerful catalyst, leveraging its universal emotional power.