Student: Kate McBride
Supervisor: Pauline Barnett
Sponsor: The Health Sponsorship Council (SunSmart Programme)
For the last three years the Health Sponsorship Council has had a sponsorship agreement with Canterbury Tennis Inc. The agreement requires Canterbury Tennis to promote the SunSmart brand through displaying the brand at events and naming rights for teams, associating the brand and behaviour with primary schools coaching and promotion of SunSmart behaviour amongst members and affiliated clubs. This project was designed to assess the performance of the contract.
Information was derived from four sources: through key informant interviews with Canterbury Tennis staff, observation of events and teams, mail questionnaire and follow up interviews with primary school coaches, and telephone interviews with representatives of affiliated clubs.
Key informants expressed a strong commitment to SunSmart branding and practice, and this was evident through exposure of the brand at events and through sponsored teams. However, there was little additional support for promoting sun safe behaviour through coaching and clubs. Coaches of primary school pupils demonstrated good awareness of sun safety and reported both practising it themselves and communicating this to pupils, although they reported a dearth of materials to assist this process. Some clubs reported free sunscreen for members and shade for spectators, but there was little actual policy with respect to sun safety either in clubs or Canterbury Tennis itself. Any advances tended to depend on leadership from individual coaches. Overall, while there are some good practices in place and an awareness of the issues, priority for sun safety does not appear to be formalised at Canterbury Tennis or club level. A more developed relationship with the Health Sponsorship Council, or another organisation with a health promotion focus, might encourage a more proactive approach.