Systematic Review of Public Health Interventions at Sporting Mass Gatherings

Thirty-four articles assessing 37 sporting mass gatherings were included in this systematic review. The work, authored by Lucia Mullen and published in 2026, analyzes the type, effectiveness, feasibility, and acceptability of public health measures for reducing respiratory pathogen spread at events like the Olympic Games.

Use Cases

• Analyze the relationship between intervention packages (e.g., bubble approaches, routine testing) and reported effectiveness outcomes.
• Compare feasibility and acceptability factors (e.g., scalability, compliance levels) across different types of mass gatherings.
• Identify the most commonly assessed sporting events, such as the Olympic Games, and their associated public health strategies.
• Examine temporal trends in planning by comparing pre-pandemic and pandemic-era studies included in the review.

Strengths

• Includes 34 peer-reviewed articles providing a structured evidence base.
• Applies a defined effectiveness framework to categorize 23 articles as effective, 3 as non-effective, and 6 as indeterminate.
• Covers a specific domain (sporting mass gatherings) with clear inclusion/exclusion criteria.

Limitations

• Small evidence base of 34 articles limits generalizability of findings.
• Excludes predictive modeling studies and publications prior to 2000, potentially omitting relevant data.
• Primary data is unavailable; analysis is confined to the summary findings presented in the review PDF.

Provenance

Source

Systematic review sourced from databases including Medline, EMBASE, Cochrane Library, Scopus, and Web of Science.

Collection Method

Systematic literature review following PRISMA guidelines, with registration CRD42023433619.

Time Range

Studies published from 2000 onward, up to the search date in July 2025.

Freshness

Literature search was conducted in June 2023 and July 2025; the review itself was updated in April 2026.

Geography

Global, as the review includes international sporting events.