Non communicable or lifestyle diseases, are health conditions where behavioural factors like inactivity and poor diet increase the risk of disease- and they killed 41 million people in 2018. According to the World Health Organisation they caused 80% of the premature deaths in 2018, and by 2030 the estimated cost will be USD$300 billion.
Reversing inactivity and poor diets is vital to stop the rapid rise in cases. But what do we do about the millions with these diseases?
Exponential growth
Start-ups pitch with ‘hockey-stick’ exponential revenue growth models, to try give investors confidence. As a researcher and public health intervention leader, Sport Health Tech CEO Bastien Wallace has been fighting exponential disease growth by designing and studying intervention practice, identifying barriers to growth and how to overcome them.
Cardiovascular disease, breast cancer, colorectal cancer, Type 2 Diabetes and obesity account for over half of the global disease burden. Community sport-based interventions for these lifestyle diseases:
- Successfully reduces, reverses and provides rehabilitation for disease
- Work across a range of sports and program formats
- Are great value, affordable and can be made accessible in remote communities
- Can help take the strain off health systems
Intervention delivery can’t scale to match the size of the lifestyle disease problem, without better measurement and ‘storytelling’. Current reporting can be onerous to complete, and fail to explain impact in ways that funders, physicians and academics understand.
A flexible tool for practicioners that aids reserch
Vector5, Co-founders and digital advisors to Sport Health Tech, are working to develop technology from this research that bridges the gap to help reduce disease for people who are already sick.
“While the problem we are solving is a global one, we need solutions that meet the needs of individual communities and are flexible enough adapt to the needs of those communities. A ‘one size fits all’ approach would be impractical if not impossible, and would not be fluid enough to incorporate what we learn from local interactions and continually improve,” said Vector5 Executive Director and Sport Health Tech co-founder, David Turnbull.
“We’re exited to turn research like this into technology that works for people, and offers health improvement to millions of people,” said David.
Sport Prescriptions, the first Sport Health Tech produt, bridges the gaps between practice, government, research and underserved communities by making program impact easier for everyone to understand. Why not check out our website at Sport Prescriptions?
