Athletes’ dual careers (DC) can be understood as an individual process of using personalresources and strategies to cope with the challenges of being a student-athlete(e.g., Brown et al., 2015), summarized as viewing DCs from a holistic developmentalapproach (Wylleman, 2019). DCs can also be understood from a holistic ecologicalapproach (HEA; Henriksen & Stambulova, 2023), considering athletes as embeddedinto a system of interrelated sport-, study- and private life relationships in a DC developmentenvironment (DCDE; Henriksen et al., 2020). In this presentation we willshare how the HEA has supported an update of the Swedish national guidelines forelite athletes’ DCs (Swedish Sports Confederation, 2018) to promote an ecologicallyinformed system of DC support across Swedish sports universities. This updated policydocument (2024) is informed by the HEA in several ways to help optimize environmentsfor student-athletes and strengthen the cooperation between stakeholdersinvolved. For example, the updated guidelines outline the organizational model forSwedish sports universities centered around optimizing DCDEs and their essentialfeatures (Storm et al., 2021). Here, the HEA helped to clarify a leading role of a DCsupport team with a DC-coordinator and DC support providers in sport and studydomains, in charge of interorganizational collaboration (Mathorne, 2021), macro- andmicro-level integration, holistic structure, and developing a shared DC philosophyacross stakeholders (e.g., Linnér et al., 2020). The guidelines also emphasize the importanceof career transition support based on transition environment frameworks (Henriksen et al., 2023) for example, in student-athletes’ transition from national elitesport high schools to sports universities. Annual national DC education held by theSwedish Sports Confederation has supported the process of integrating an environmentperspective in the DC support across Swedish sports universities.