Healthy Athletes Program

The Healthy Athletes Program that is part of the Special Olympics has a history of 14 years of helping athletes overcome their impairments, medical problems or injuries. The program offers free health screenings and medical investigations. They also provide competitoras with health information by organizing health courses. For 10 years, through this special Healthy Athletes program, The Special Olympics has become one of the biggest global public health providers. The Healthy Athletes program was launched in 1997 as part of a Special Olympics initiative to reach poor sportspeople all over the world. From that moment on, every sporting competition hosted in any country of the world benefited from the presence of a Special Olympics medical team who provided quality checkups and medical advice. With their help, athletes all over the world benefited from a welcoming and fun environment and were educated by professionals on how to make more healthy life choices and take care of themselves.

The Healthy Athletes program has workers in more than 100 countries all over the world. Their mission is to assist as many athletes with problems as possible. Until today, the program has offered more than 1 million medical screenings. Their long time goal is to fill the gap left by the lack of local medical assistance, especially in poor countries. The program’s medical workers are also responsible with providing athletes with free preventative medications. Workers are obligated to assist every athlete, even if they need just a basic or minor checkup.

The program has managed to help a lot of athletes from all over the globe. It has also proven extremely efficient in collecting valuable info useful for medical research that will help develop more effective drugs for athletes. The program also takes care of athletes with intellectual disabilities, who are more prone to health issues.