Scoring Lifestyle Medicine Goals With FIFA 2022-An Opportunity to Strike Big! Academic Article uri icon

Overview

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.

publication date

  • July 12, 2021

Identity

PubMed Central ID

  • PMC8848109

Scopus Document Identifier

  • 84883656449

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

  • 10.1097/01.med.0000433056.76699.5d

PubMed ID

  • 35185438

Additional Document Info

volume

  • 16

issue

  • 1