Affiliation:
1. From the Institute for Population Health, Weill Cornell Medicine, Doha, Qatar (SD, SC, RM) and Weill Cornell Medicine, Doha, Qatar (JS)
Abstract
Qatar is one of the few countries in the world with a dedicated national sports day. Qatar believes that sport is one of the best tools to promote a healthy lifestyle to help curb the growing burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs). With the well-established positive health effects of soccer on cardiovascular, metabolic, and musculoskeletal conditions, the vision of the FIFA World Cup 2022™ hosted by Qatar to use the power of soccer to “open the door of an amazing world experience” is praiseworthy. With NCDs accounting for 70% of deaths in Qatar, there exists a perfect opportunity to promote healthy lifestyles to prevent, treat, and reverse NCDs. We believe that the FIFA World Cup 2022™ presents an opportunity that could contribute to generating valuable evidence on the lifestyle benefits of such large-scale events. This event comes at an opportune moment for countries in the region to make their health systems lifestyle-sensitive. FIFA World Cup 2022™ could just be the tipping point in the region that establishes the role of sports in mitigating the burden of NCDs. With the impact of COVID-19 on persons with pre-existing NCDs, the urgency for addressing the “syndemic” cannot be overemphasized and sport can be the lifestyle medicine.
Subject
Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health,Health Policy,Medicine (miscellaneous)
Cited by
3 articles.
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