This article is a part of the UHC's Hot Topics in Urban Health Policy Blog Series and begins a short series by the Director of the Urban Health Collaborative, Ana V Diez Roux, elaborating on the parallels between the 2026 World Cup and the current state of public health.
June 18, 2026
As I was growing up in Argentina, the World Cup was a major event anxiously awaited every four years: hopeful and yet unavoidably disappointing (most of the time), a metaphor for the country’s repeatedly dashed ambitions, but despite this, endlessly celebratory. When I arrived in the United States over thirty years ago, no one had heard of the World Cup (yes, the “World” Series, but not the World Cup). There were very few ways to watch it, and all of them required money, which as a student I did not have. Thankfully, the Latin American students banded with the European students to identify someone who had access to a usually illicit satellite cable connection on which we could watch the games, sometimes at bizarre hours and even at the cost of sitting beside your arch-rival (in my case this meant one of my many Brazilian classmates).
But this time it’s all different. In the United States, the World Cup is everywhere: in the paper, on the news, on the radio. Games are played in cities ranging from Toronto to Dallas, and are reviewed on Fox, Telemundo, NPR, the front page of the New York Times, and the Philadelphia Inquirer. FIFA advertising is everywhere, and there are “watch parties” all over Philadelphia. A record 48 teams are competing, and to the shock of many purists, underdogs are holding up against traditional European and Latin American powerhouses, and even the US looks like they may actually be a contender. But despite all this, despite our reservations about FIFA and the now obligatory “hydration break” (even in air-conditioned venues, a sneaky way to slip advertising into the middle of the game), we are hooked.
The first World Cup game in Philadelphia was on Sunday, June 14. Naively, my husband and I biked down to the “Philadelphia Stadium,” renamed from Lincoln Financial Field, home of the beloved Philadelphia Eagles, on the odd chance that we could somehow get tickets to the Ecuador-Ivory Coast game. There were no tickets, of course, but the spectacle was worth the trip: thousands of Ecuadorean fans, all dressed in yellow, filled the stands, which we could see (and hear) in the distance, and many without tickets like us congregated around several large outdoor screens. Smaller but mighty, groups of Ivory Coast fans were intermingled with the Ecuadorean fans, and valiantly cheered on their team, all the way to a dramatic last-minute game-winning goal.
In contrast to many local games, World Cup soccer can be remarkably civil. In the Ecuador-Ivory Coast game, an Ecuadorean player helped an Ivory Coast player up after a tackle, and they both hugged. Fans chanted for opposite teams right by each other and smiled (something that would be unheard of in Buenos Aires, where only one set of fans is allowed to attend each game…). Seeing the list of countries competing and watching fans from all over the world show up to support their teams wherever they play, in Toronto, in Kansas City, in Mexico City, in Philadelphia, somehow gives one hope that civil global cooperation is still possible, even in today’s world of authoritarianism, war, and sheer cruelty.
There are so many areas in which global cooperation is critical to success. Health is certainly one of them. Controlling the spread of infectious diseases first comes to mind, since an outbreak at one location can eventually lead to disease many thousands of kilometers away. This is a selfish interest: we want to control disease elsewhere because if not, it may affect us (although even this fact has not prevented the United States from withdrawing from major global efforts focused on controlling disease transmission). But many other health problems also require global cooperation. Global partnerships can facilitate the sharing of resources and information, promoting more equitable distributions, as has been the case in the global initiative to increase worldwide access to life-saving vaccines. Health-damaging industries span borders and addressing their health impacts can benefit from global agreements like the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Cities across the globe can benefit from sharing experiences and practices on healthy urban policies, as is done by global networks of cities.
Most importantly, many health problems have their origin in global systems. The health impact of climate change is a case in point: climate change cannot be addressed without grappling with the steady expansion of the global economy, the consequent growth of energy consumption and the burning of fossil fuels. This requires significant transformation of the ways we live, work, and distribute resources, within and between countries. Only global cooperation can address these challenges. Improving health also requires learning across countries and advancing collaborative research: why do some countries or some cities have better health than others? What are the implications for policy? What can we learn from the effects of policies being implemented in different contexts? All this requires global research partnerships, another area under threat in the United States as a result of the Trump administration.
Before riding our bikes to the Ecuador-Ivory Coast game, we watched the Japan-Netherlands game on TV at home. It was a great game, two very different teams with very different styles, a very civil game with very few fouls. When the game ended, and after the Japan coach Hajime Moriyasu had completed his post-game interview, he asked to come back because he remembered that he had something else to say to the many Dutch journalists. Speaking in Japanese, he thanked the Dutch players and managers who had contributed to the development of Japanese soccer over the years by sharing their expertise, he himself had benefited from this as a player in his youth, as had so many more. Sadly, apparently many of those at the press conference did not understand him, as they were no longer tuning in on the translation. But he delivered his message to all those who listened, and it was one of generosity and global cooperation. In today’s world, what more could one ask of the beautiful game?