Football Cooperative, a community based physical activity social intervention for men: An assessment of effectiveness when replicated at scale using a social return on investment (SROI) framework.

Across the western world, men have a lower life expectancy than women and have higher death rates for most of the leading causes of death and at all ages. The Football Cooperative (FC) initiative provides social ‘pick up football’ games for men aimed at reducing social isolation among men and improving their overall health and well-being. Since 2021, FC has been the subject of a feasibility study for scale up [Stage 1] and an implementation science study to develop an implementation strategy to deliver FC at scale for the benefit of population health [Stage 2]. Adopting a quasi-experimental repeated measures controlled design within a social return on investment (SROI) framework, the current study proposes to assess the efficacy of the FC initiative when scaled [Y1 12 sites; Y2 30 sites; Y3 60 sites] to a) determine the social value of the FC games at scale, b) the biopsychosocial health impact the FC games at scale, c) the reach of FC games at scale and d) the health economic impact of FC games at scale. The findings from this study will inform fidelity of delivery and equitable benefit for participants when the FC initiative is rolled out nationally and internationally.