By BRUCE Y. LEE, MD, MBA
Results from a new computer simulation model from researchers at the City University of New York Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy show that achieving a federal goal for youth sports participation would have significant social and economic benefits – $57 billion in direct medical costs saved and increased productivity of workers alone, plus more than 1.4 million years lived in good health.
The federal government’s Healthy People program, established during the Carter Administration, sets health-promotion and disease-prevention goals for the nation every 10 years. The Healthy People 2030 goals introduced youth sports participation as a public health goal for the first time, setting a target of 63.3% of youth participating on a sports team or taking sports lessons by 2030 – up from a baseline of 58.4%, taken from the 2016-17 National Survey of Children’s Health. Participation has declined since the baseline was established: in 2020-21, the most recent year with data and occurring at a time impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, 50.7% of children and adolescents ages 6-17 were playing sports.
What if youth sports participation reached the government’s 63.3% goal? The Aspen Institute’s Sports & Society Program asked researchers at a leading computational analysis unit to assess the societal benefits. The Public Health Informatics, Computational and Operations Research (PHICOR) team used a simulated version of the U.S. population, called Virtual Population for Obesity Prevention (VPOP), that tracks variables related to obesity and health. PHICOR ran hundreds of simulations with the youth sports participation variable for children 6-17, set first at 50.7% (the lower participation level) and then at 63.3% (the higher participation level).
The simulations found that at the higher participation level of 63.3% youth playing sports in the United States, the prevalence of obesity and overweightness drops an average of 4.2% within that population, representing 2.3 million fewer children who have overweight or obesity than at the lower youth sports participation level of 50.7%. That’s important: Obesity rates for people aged 2-19 years old have increased from 5% in 1978 to 18.5% in 2016, according to the State of Childhood Obesity report. Today, about 1 in 16 children and adolescents have severe obesity, leading to more reports of children suffering from medical conditions that were previously reserved for much older adults.
What can happen when obesity and overweight rates go down in such a manner? Less illness down the road: an average of 169,147 fewer cases of diabetes, 157,636 fewer cases of coronary heart disease events, and 121,983 fewer cases of cancer. Preventing such diseases would extend people’s lives, saving on average 757 years of life, but also increase the quality of their lives as they age. Results from the simulations showed an average gain of 1,412,207 quality-adjusted life years, an index number that represents one year spent in optimal health.
These improved health outcomes would also translate into direct and indirect economic benefits. There would be an average of $23.8 billion in direct medical costs saved and an additional average of $32.8 billion gained through the increased productivity of healthier workers – creating benefits for all Americans, not only those participating in sports.
The projected benefits provide a rallying point for stakeholders to unlock new investment and policy opportunities from the public and private sectors. The analysis was released at the 10th anniversary Project Play Summit in Colorado Springs, Colo., the annual convening of the network launched by the Aspen Institute in 2013 to build healthy communities through sports.
“We are excited by this report which contributes to the evidence regarding the physical, mental, and social benefits of youth sports,” said RDML Paul Reed, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health and the Director of the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, which coordinates Healthy People 2030. “It emphasizes the importance of collective efforts to increase youth sports participation toward meeting the Healthy People 2030 vision of a society in which all people can achieve their full potential for health and well-being.”
The Virtual Population for Obesity Prevention (VPOP) project diverges from reality in some ways. The simulations only tracked young people who were ages 6-17 years old at the start of the simulation, following them through the end of their virtual lives. In reality, as one cohort ages into adulthood, another cohort of 6- to 17-year-olds would be following on their heels. Each time a new cohort arrives, which would happen about every decade, we would expect to see a similar set of savings (increased due to inflation). Therefore, in the next 20 years, you could expect to see more than double each of the savings listed above. A sustained increase in youth sports participation would be a gift that keeps giving.
The preliminary results of these simulations could change as the model continues to grow more sophisticated and accurate. The VPOP simulation was also limited to tracking benefits to physical health from increased participation. There’s evidence that sports participation can also have significant mental health benefits, helping to reduce anxiety and depression symptoms, improve self-esteem and resilience, bolster cognitive abilities, and benefit mental and emotional health in various ways. PHICOR is working to integrate these benefits into the next set of simulations. Full results will be published later this year.
When delivered in a manner that meets the needs of participants, sports can be fun — which can bring even more benefits, many of which are hard to measure. Therefore, consider the $57 billion in economic benefits to be a conservative estimate. With the matrix of health and economic challenges that our country faces, getting more youth to play sports would be a much-needed investment in America’s future.
Bruce Y. Lee, MD, MBA is the founder and Executive Director of Public Health Computational, Informatics, and Operations Research (PHICOR) at the City University of New York.
The PHICOR Team conducted the VPOP simulation runs that generated results for this article. This team includes Marie Ferguson, Jessie Heneghan, Colleen Weatherwax, Sarah Bartsch, Kelly O’Shea, Kevin Chin, Kavya Velmurugan, Sarah Rebbert, Alexis Dibbs, and Sheryl Scannell.