The World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Federation of the Sporting Goods Industry (WFSGI) formed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) agreement to “align and reinforce private sector support to increase physical activity and community sport participation to improve global health.”
“There is much we can learn from the sports industry,” said Dr. Ruediger Krech, director of the Department of Health Promotion, World Health Organization. “WHO’s mandate is to advocate and enable good health. We need to draw on all expertise and creativity to help our collective work and strengthen participation in physical activity and grassroots sport for everyone, everywhere.”
WHO said its first agreement with an international sports business association “seeks to amplify public health messages on physical activity, create mechanisms to share knowledge and best practices and reinforce the physical activity workforce to help communities be more active.”
The work will focus on “enabling youth, girls and women and people living with disabilities to have more access to sport and physical activity opportunities.”
Building on years of informal collaboration, the MOU between the WFSGI and WHO “focuses on scaling the implementation of effective policies set out in the WHO Global Action Plan on Physical Activity (GAPPA) 2018 to 2030.”
WHO estimates that “public health systems spend around $27 billion a year treating noncommunicable diseases that could have been prevented by increasing physical activity. WHO also estimates that almost 500 million additional people will develop noncommunicable diseases attributable to physical inactivity between 2020 and 2030.”
Recent reports reveal “progress on increasing physical activity and implementing GAPPA has been slow and heavily disrupted by the pandemic. The MOU supports a joint ambition to see more people active, reduce healthcare costs and improve healthier lives for everyone, everywhere.”
“We welcome this MOU. This is a milestone for our industry and an example of a win-win partnership,” said Robbert de Kock, WFSGI president & CEO. “The inactivity crisis is real, and it has severe consequences for society. We know that 81 percent of young people do not benefit from enough physical activity, and as countries develop, economic levels of inactivity increase and can be as high as 70 percent. That’s why signing this MOU with WHO is a critical step to advocate for elevating levels of sport and physical activity globally so that more people can lead active and healthier lives.”
The WFSGI is a global, non-profit business association of manufacturers and retailers of sports products, including clothing, footwear and equipment. Its membership represents “70 percent of the global industry turnover.”
A critical aspect of the MOU will be “sharing private sector research, technical knowledge and best practices that could inform WHO’s efforts to support countries and communities to build capacity and strengthen the physical activity and sport workforce; increase access and help address inequalities for people living with disabilities; maximize the use of digital tools/innovations which can encourage everyone to move more; and provide affordable access to sport equipment, sport for development, and physical education, particularly in youth, children, and women.”
