Two sport mega-events will take place in Brazil in the coming years: the FIFA Football World Cup in 2014 and the IOC summer Olympic Games in 2016.
The concept of Global Health characterizes a research project, which Stefano Martelli, Professor in Sociology of Sport Communication, University of Bologna, and Celi Nelza ZulkeTaffarel, Professor of Sport and Phisical Education, Universidade Federal de Bahia - Sao Salvador, proposed at FIBRA Foundation in January 2013.
Martelli and Taffarel's project assumes the perspective of the health communication and declines it into the global communication.
This research project will investigate if these global events will have positive or negative effects on the health of Brazilian (and Italian) population: encouraging sport for all, or, on the countrary, if they encourage habits little or nothing coherent with healthy lifestyles, like the assumption of high-calories food and drinks by commercial advertisings during the TV broadcasting of football matches or track-and-field finals.
A lot of data will be collected, both by quantitative methods (Auditel data) and by qualitative tools, such as interviewes, focus groups, visual sociology, and so on.
The research aim is to study the social impact of the World Cup; other global events, such as winter Olympics and Paralympics, which will take place even in 2014, may be also explored in a comparative approach.