Systematic Review of Public Health Measures at Sporting Mass Gatherings

34 articles assessing 37 sporting mass gatherings, including 10 Olympic Games, were reviewed for intervention effectiveness. Lucia Mullen authored this systematic review, which searched databases including Medline and WHO Library in June 2023 and July 2025. The work maps pre-pandemic and pandemic-era planning for sporting events.

Use Cases

• Analyze the relationship between specific intervention types (e.g., bubble approaches, routine testing) and reported effectiveness outcomes.
• Compare feasibility and acceptability factors (e.g., scalability, perceived work burden) across different sporting event types.
• Identify temporal trends in public health strategies by examining the publication dates and event years of the 34 included studies.

Strengths

• Systematic methodology following a registered protocol (CRD42023433619) and searching 12 major databases.
• Clear inclusion/exclusion criteria, such as excluding predictive modeling studies and publications prior to 2000.
• Developed a specific effectiveness framework to categorize 23 articles as effective, 3 as non-effective, and 6 as indeterminate.

Limitations

• Small evidence base of only 34 included articles, limiting statistical power for subgroup analysis.
• Temporal staleness: the literature search concluded in July 2025, but the dataset itself is a static PDF review.
• Potential publication bias, as the review only includes retrospective discussions of official sporting events.

Provenance

Source

figshare, authored by Lucia Mullen.

Collection Method

Systematic literature review of databases including Medline, EMBASE, Cochrane Library, Scopus, and WHO sources.

Time Range

Studies published from 2000 onward, with searches conducted in June 2023 and July 2025.

Freshness

Last updated on 2026-04 08, but the underlying evidence review is complete as of July 2025.

Geography

Global, covering sporting mass gatherings worldwide.