Sports Can Transform Lives

The Healthy Sport Index combines the best available data and expert analysis to identify the relative benefits and risks of participating in the 10 most popular high school boys and girls sports. The tool is a product of the Aspen Institute Sports & Society Program, developed in partnership with Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) and with the guidance of an advisory group of medical doctors, researchers and other specialists whose experience spans a range of disciplines, sports, and athlete populations.

Three areas of health were analyzed:

• Physical Activity: How much are athletes moving their bodies in that sport? A large body of research underscores the benefits of exercise, from brain development to reduced risk of chronic illness.
• Safety: How prevalent are injuries in that sport? Injuries suffered in the course of playing a sport, and whether they impair body or brain function over the life span, limit the benefits of sports.
• Psychosocial: How has playing a sport changed the behaviors of its athletes? Have their emotional and social skills improved? Has it motivated them academically? Are they less likely to abuse drugs and alcohol?

The Aspen Institute, HSS and the advisory group recognize that playing sports in general is good for youth, as is enjoying more than one sport or physical activity. Different sports offer different benefits, and different youth have different health needs. Further, how each sport experience is served up differs from school to school, and team to team. No single experience is the same and some programs and coaches adhere to best practices more closely than others.

Thus, the Healthy Sport Index is not intended to conclude which sports youth should or shouldn’t play. Also, lower results of a sport do not imply that choosing that sport is detrimental as opposed to not choosing a sport at all, as all sports have some benefit. Rather, the aggregate data and results produced are designed to help athletes and families make informed decisions based on that child’s specific needs.

We know that parents believe in the power of sport to build healthy lives and want such a tool. The federal government’s Physical Activity Guidelines highlight youth sports as a key opportunity in building healthy communities, noting that it’s important to “understand the risks, yet be confident that physical activity can be safe for almost everyone.” Educators, civic leaders, health and medical organizations, sport governing bodies, and other stakeholders may also find the Healthy Sport Index useful in improving the delivery of sports experiences.

Throughout the website, the results assigned to each sport are based on an equal weighting for each category – one-third for Physical Activity, one-third for Safety, one-third for Psychosocial. The dial on the front page of the website allows customization of those results, based on your priorities; assign the emphasis you place on each of the three categories, and watch the list of sports below re-order itself.

Then, learn more about the characteristics of each sport we evaluated. You’ll find the overall rank (based on our one-third equal distribution of category results), as well as rich health-related data on each sport. Each sport-specific page also includes recommendations on companion sports to play made by national governing bodies of those sports as well as two of the greatest athletes of the past century, NBA legend Kobe Bryant and Olympic champion heptathlete Jackie Joyner-Kersee. These recommendations can be used as well to evaluate options for youth who want or need to find alternate sports, due to interest or roster-size limitations. We also suggest a few best practices for that sport, with links to additional resources.

Side-by-side comparisons of all sports can be found on our Sports Results page. To learn more about how we developed the results, read the Methodology page; for why we built the tool this way, read the Frequently Asked Questions page. Also check out our Key Findings page, identifying 10 insights that emerged within and across sports in the course of our work, advancing knowledge on the topic of sports and health.

Think you’re an exemplary high school team for sports health? Apply now at as.pn/HSIContest to the Healthy Sport Index Contest for a chance to win a financial award and national recognition. We’re searching for teams that embrace best practices and innovate new ways to support physical activity, minimize injury risk, and support athletes’ emotional, social and mental well-being. Learn more about the Healthy Sport Index Contest rules.

“Project Play is the aggregator, the unifier, the commons for all honorable programs that serve youth through sports. The world’s first tool to offer apples-to-apples data and insights across the most commonly played sports, the Healthy Sport Index will help parents, educators, medical professionals, policymakers and other stakeholders assess and improve the quality of sport activities.”
James Whitehead
CEO/Executive Vice President
American College of Sports Medicine

“In trying to navigate today’s youth sports scene, any guidance helps. That’s why a new tool released by the Aspen Institute’s Sports & Society Program, called the Healthy Sport Index, couldn’t be more timely. The handy website allows families to weigh three factors in deciding what sport makes the most sense: safety, physical activity, and the sport’s psychosocial benefits.”
TIME.com, Oct. 12, 2018

“Whether you choose to play sports, and the sports that you play can dramatically affect the course of the rest of your life, including even potentially how long you live. Yet, there has long been a shortage of proper guidance for making this decision, that is, until now. … (The Healthy Sport Index) could help you, your parents, or your kids make much more informed decisions when choosing what sports to play.”
Forbes, Nov. 10, 2018

“As we are starting to see more and more studies showing the risks of sport specialization, the Healthy Sport Index provides an evidence-based platform for parents, coaches, and medical professionals to guide young athletes into complimentary athletic endeavors offering less risk of injury and maximizing the well-known psychosocial benefits of sports participation.”
Dr. Michael (Mick) Koester
Chair of Sports Medicine Advisory Committee
National Federation of State High School Associations

“Sports are for a lifetime, not just in school, so the fact that you can adjust the Healthy Sport Index for the core three areas is also of great value. Being a multisport athlete has just gotten easier thanks to the Aspen Institute.”
John Kessel
Director, Sport Development
USA Volleyball

“The Healthy Sport Index is a good starting point to provide resources for athletes and parents as to what sports they may decide to try based on three key elements: physical activity, safety, and psychosocial behaviors. This index is great for coaches and sport organizations as it provides clear focus on three key elements of why people play sports. If sport organizations can work to improve how we train and provide sport experience to our members, we can start to battle the wave of athletes that quit sport too early.”
Mike Clayton
Manager of Coaches Education
USA Wrestling

“The HSI was designed to help kids and families answer the important question: what sport is right for my child? As a physician caring for thousands of these athletes a year, I can’t tell you how often I’m posed that question. Now there is a tool to help.”
Dr. James MacDonald
Clinical Associate Professor, Ohio State University College of Medicine
Deputy Editor, Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine

“Before you sign your child up to play a sport, would you be interested in knowing which sport could influence whether or not your child graduates from college? Or which sport has the highest rate of athletes who binge drink or use marijuana? Did you know that kids who play lacrosse or wrestle are more likely to cut class than kids who play basketball or tennis? If you are not sure which high school sport is the best for your child, now there is a cool resource to help you answer that question.”
Alex Flanagan
Founder, I Love to Watch You Play

“I honestly think this is the most interesting and useful collection of data on youth athletics that I have ever seen. The safety data, activity data and psychosocial data on their own would have been very useful. To have all of them together and able to be considered at various levels of emphasis is fantastic. It’s super useful for parents, but more importantly than that, it’s just very interesting.”
Ken Tysiac
Parent of High School Athlete

“The Healthy Sport Index is a first-of-its-kind attempt to look holistically at what contributes to the overall health associated with high school participation. Like any effort this ambitious, there is more we hope to do in understanding how different sports may contribute to various aspects of health, but this has been as thorough and thoughtful an attempt to wrestle with understanding these issues as I have seen.”
Dr. Matt Bowers
Assistant Professor of Instruction in Sport Management
University of Texas at Austin

“The Healthy Sport Index should transform the way we think about youth and high school sports. Combining all of this information on health, safety, and physical activity allows athletes and families to explore options based upon their individual preferences and priorities. This is not about identifying one ‘best sport,’ but rather helping young people – and those who care for them – identify which sport is best for them.”
Dr. Michele LaBotz
Council on Sports Medicine and Fitness
American Academy of Pediatrics

“I have been involved with a number of organizations, consensus statements, and governing bodies. The Healthy Sport Index is the most comprehensive and rigorous compilation of high school sports data to date to help guide parents and young athletes on their choice of sports. This innovative index utilizes all the available scientific evidence in a number of different areas as well as an expert panel in a way that has not been done to date. I expect this to be one of the most important and practical resources for any parent, child, or coach involved in youth sports.”
Dr. Neeru Jayanthi
Director
Emory Sports Medicine Research and Education

“I think the Healthy Sport Index has a great opportunity to be a conversation starter between parents and their children about what they want out of sport. Sport in and of itself is neither positive or negative. The Healthy Sport Index highlights that there’s always an opportunity for improvement, not just from sport to sport but season to season and coach to coach.”
Dr. Michael Kanters
Parks, Recreation & Tourism Management Professor
North Carolina State University

Contact Us

The Aspen Institute Sports & Society Program
2300 N St NW, Suite 700
Washington, D.C. 20037
info@healthysportindex.com