By Ask Vest Christiansen and John Gleaves

It is a hectic time of year. But even if the sprint towards the semester finish line can suck out most of our energy, the IOC’s decision to ban Russia from competing at next year's Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, probably has not escaped anyone’s attention. Still, Russian athletes who can “be considered clean to the satisfaction of [the IOC] panel” will be allowed to compete in South Korea under a neutral IOC flag (IOC Statement 2017).    

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By Cornelia Blank, University for Health Sciences, Medical Informatics and Technology, Austria

Efforts to protect athletes’ health and integrity must consider doping and its prevention. Accordingly, doping prevention is given high priority by 35 international federations questioned. Considering the definition of prevention in a public health context, the focus is set on identifying risk factors and then minimizing these risk factors to decrease the incidence of an illness. In this regard, no matter if we consider doping as an illness or if we consider negative health effects of doping whose incidence we aim to decrease, the perspective is risk-factor based and identifying these was focus of most of the research in doping prevention over the last 10 years.

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