Recommendation 12

HM Government Acknowledged

The Government accepts this recommendation. The Government believes that, through the National Physical Activity Taskforce (NPAT) and Board of Women’s Sport, the above recommendation can be achieved. In September 2023, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) established the NPAT to deliver against the Government’s sport strategy Get Active. The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), and Department for Education are both standing members of the NPAT. The Review of Women’s Football highlighted that it has been estimated that only 6% of sports exercise and science research involve only women5. The Review called for DCMS to convene a Board of Women’s Sport to look at some of the prevalent issues facing women’s sport and female athletes. The Board has been formally established and the first meeting took place on 26 March 2024. The first Board meeting was attended by academics, NGBs and sporting organisations, such as The Well HQ, UK Sports Institute and Women’s Sport Trust. The DHSC is a member of the Board of Women’s Sport. The first meeting of the Board of Women’s Sport focused on player welfare and challenges that face female athletes. We recognise the issues that still exist in the appropriate kit being available and designed for females and there is no doubt that the design and availability of suitable kit will form part of future discussion too including work already being taken forward in this space by sports. In July 2022, the Department of Health and Social Care published the Women’s Health Strategy for England. The strategy sets out the Government’s plans for boosting the health and wellbeing of all women and girls, and improving the ways in which the health and care system engages and listens to women and girls. Research and evidence is a key priority for the Women’s Health Strategy. The strategy has several ambitions such as to increasing the representation of women in research both in terms of participation and across research awards and decision-making committees, to place women’s voices and priorities at the heart of research from identification of need to dissemination and implementation in practice, and to ensure that we have the right data and evidence to improve women’s health outcomes and their experiences of healthcare services. These ambitions extend beyond the topic of girls and women in sport. The DHSC funds research through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). The NIHR actively seeks opportunities to drive the research and evidence ambitions detailed in the Women’s Health Strategy forward. The NIHR Research Inclusion Strategy 2022–2027 aims to ensure that research is representative and reflects the diversity of the population. A key initiative linked to this strategy is the publication of the NIHR INCLUDE guidance6 to improve the inclusion of under-served groups in clinical research. Another notable focal point is to increase the representation of women across NIHR awards and committees. The NIHR has therefore announced a set of aspirational targets to improve the diversity of professional committee and panel membership by 2027, which includes a target of at least 50% females (sex). Furthermore, the NIHR is working with organisations across the research system through the Medical Science Sex and Gender Equity project (MESSAGE) to co-develop both a sex and gender policy framework for funders and regulators, and guidance for sex and gender disaggregation in research design, to improve health outcomes for all in the UK. In addition to this strategic activity, the NIHR commissions research through a range of infrastructure and research programmes. For example, the NIHR School for Public Health Research explored how young people (aged 12 to 21) feel about engaging in physical activity such as sports, exercise and walking in public places, with a particular focus on how these individuals felt about the environments associated with physical activity. These findings revealed that feelings of insecurity, worry and fear were prevalent among the study group, who were all living in areas of England with high deprivation. The research recommends that more work is needed to create environments where young people feel confident and safe enough to exercise and play sport, and that young people, especially those who experience intersecting barriers to participating in physical activity, need to be involved and listened to when policy and practice linked to physical activity is being developed, to help remove the complex barriers to physical activity and encourage them to adopt and maintain healthier lifestyles.