In an effort to tackle physical inactivity, WHO, the European Union (EU) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) have jointly committed to approaching sports and physical activity not only as a public health issue, but also by addressing the economic impact of physical inactivity. In support of this approach, the Directorate General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture (DG EAC) of the European Commission organized a sport cluster meeting on 11 April 2018 to provide a platform for discussing the economic benefits of sport, ways to measure it, and ways to incorporate available data into sports policy.
Physical inactivity has been rated as high as the 4th leading risk factor for global mortality, causing an estimated 3.2 million deaths globally and 1 million deaths (about 10% of the total) per year in the WHO European Region. While the impact on health of physical inactivity is well documented, little research has been done on the economic aspect and the cost-effectiveness of sports programmes.
The economic aspects of sport are manifold and fall into very different categories – ranging from the revenue brought by major sports events to their host cities to the effects sport has on other sectors like tourism and sport equipment production, or the surpluses in employment and purchasing power – and also the economic cost of physical inactivity.
WHO/Europe and the DG EAC have an ongoing collaboration to support Member States in their efforts to increase the physical activity levels of the population, which is one of the global voluntary noncommunicable disease targets. As part of this collaboration, WHO and OECD have initiated a project to estimate the cost of physical inactivity across the Region, using comparable methods and data sources. The recently started second phase of the project will allow estimation of the cost-effectiveness of specific interventions, such as building cycling lanes or sports infrastructure. This would provide much needed information for national-level policy-making in the areas of sports and health, and hopefully lead to raising physical activity and amateur sports higher on national agendas.
The sport cluster meeting in April, entitled “The economic dimension of sport: why sport matters” focussed on economic aspects of physical inactivity and the cost-effectiveness of sports policies. Dr Kremlin Wickramasinghe, Science Officer, represented the WHO European Office for the Prevention and Control of Noncommunicable Diseases in this meeting.
During the meeting, the next EU member state to hold the EU Presidency, Austria, presented ideas to bring the sports agenda forward. Barbara Spindler-Oswald, a representative of the Austrian Presidency, emphasized the necessity of promoting low-intensity everyday sports, such as sport at workplaces. This approach is very much in line with WHO workplace health promotion, which will hopefully lead to more avenues for cooperation in the future.