Executive Summary

Major sporting events bring millions of people together from across the globe, providing many benefits to host countries, including valuable infrastructure investment, increased tourism income and a heightened sense of national pride. However, such events also present a multitude of challenges and risks.

Legacy planning is often not prioritized when dealing with the many stressful demands of delivering a successful event and can result in a missed opportunity in realizing future health and public health benefits.

This report demonstrates how effective planning for these challenges can be leveraged to achieve three primary health goals:

• Protect health during the event: Protect the health of visitors, spectators, participants and the local population during the event.
• Establish a health and public health legacy: Plan for the sporting event to deliver assets, change health behaviors, encourage infrastructure investment and develop capacity.
• Share learning: Codify and disseminate lessons learned to future hosts.

Figure 1 illustrates this as a framework for addressing the health challenges involved in hosting major sporting events.