When the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion challenged the world to rethink health in 1986, it recognised that health is shaped and supported not only in hospitals and clinics, but also in the communities where people live, learn, work and play.
Today, that message is more relevant than ever. Around the world, health systems are grappling with the growing burden of chronic disease. The World Health Organization predicts a $27 billion annual cost associated with new cases of preventable non-communicable diseases between 2020 and 2030. Yet physical inactivity remains among the most significant, modifiable threats to health.
Although often underappreciated, this is where sport can play a major role in improving population health and well-being, as a shared practice transcending borders and language. Sport has a remarkable capacity to transform lives. It helps build confidence, resilience and leadership. It fosters inclusion and a sense of belonging. It brings together people from different cultures, backgrounds and generations in ways that few other activities can.
This understanding is inherent in the International Olympic Committee’s vision to “build a better world through sport”. When people choose to expand and sustain participation in sport, they choose to improve health and well-being. At a time when societies are confronting complex health and social challenges, sport can be a unifier and a solution.
Recognising sport as a public health priority
When sport is seen as a key contributor to increasing physical activity rather than a separate concept, it becomes clear that building participation in safe and accessible sport can be one of the most effective and sustainable pathways to help people improve health across the lifespan. Sport participants are two to three times more likely to meet the WHO’s physical activity guidelines. Moreover, the value of sport extends far beyond this contribution.
Sport-specific benefits include improved psychosocial health in youth, with team sports in particular benefiting mental health and social well-being, and improved quality of life and stronger social connections in older adults. Sport also supports social inclusion, integration and community cohesion in underserved communities. For the IOC, ensuring that women and girls, refugees, and underserved communities have access to physical activity through sport is more than a question of fairness on the field of play – it is a health equity imperative.
Decades of research showing these benefits means decisive action is possible now for lasting change. The question is no longer whether to support sport as a key enabler of health, but how to create the conditions that make participation possible, accessible and appealing for as many people as possible.
Increasing participation is a political choice
Healthy societies do not emerge by accident. They are shaped by policies that make healthy choices easier. The choice to participate in sport – and physical activity more generally – while frequently framed as a matter of individual responsibility, is, in reality, constrained by circumstance. Opportunities for movement are heavily influenced by the environments people live in.
Sport participation is higher when opportunities are accessible, inclusive and convenient and build social connection. Approaches that reduce barriers and create supportive environments are widely recognised as a public health strategy. This is one reason behind the development of the Olympic Games legacy programmes. In concert with the Beijing 2022 Olympic Games, China’s nationwide growth in winter sports participation, employment and infrastructure, supported by education initiatives and mass participation programmes, engaged 346 million people. The Paris 2024 Games also set out to get France moving: sport is now more deeply embedded in the school day; free swimming schemes have taught tens of thousands of children; and Olympic and Paralympic Week has reached more than five million pupils since 2017, and will continue as France prepares for the Alpes 2030 Olympic Winter Games. In Paris, 38 Games-born social sport programmes – from women-only sessions on public courts to new club sections for athletes with disabilities – reach some 50,000 people a year. Since the Games, eight in ten French people report exercising weekly.
Beyond the immediate health benefits participation brings, choosing to invest in sport also makes good economic sense. World Economic Forum data show that participatory sport and physical activity make up 25% of the global sport economy.
When governments invest in community sport in meaningful ways, they are doing more than supporting leisure. From creating and maintaining recreation facilities such as swimming pools, indoor tracks and multi-purpose fields to embedding sport programmes in the school curriculum and community, increased opportunities for sport participation at every age can improve health and well-being across the lifespan.
When we choose sport, we choose health
If we are serious about improving individual and population health, we must recognise the positive role that sport can play. Alongside investments in active transport, recreation, physical education and community health promotion, investment in sport can help create environments where people are more likely to move, connect and thrive.
By making it easier for people to take part in sport, we are investing in illness and injury prevention, improved and sustained population health, and increases in individual and collective well-being. Making the choice for sport easier reveals the importance of access for all.
Forty years after the Ottawa Charter, the lesson remains unchanged: health is created through the choices societies make. Investing in sport is a political choice that supports physical activity, improves health, stimulates economies and strengthens communities. By choosing to invest in sport today, we are not only improving health outcomes, we are contributing meaningfully to making a better world for generations to come.
