The best way to improve public health is by increasing the number of sports facilities

IELTS Writing Task 2 with sample answer.

You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.

Some people say that the best way to improve public health is by increasing the number of sports facilities. Others, however, say that this would have little effect on public health and that other measures are required.

Discuss both these views and give your own opinion.


Idea Generation for this essay:

Why increased number of sports facilities are best for improving the public health?Beneficial for the society

  • Easy access to a nearby sport facility would encourage people to get involved in sports activities.
  • More parents would take their children to these sports centers to let them play.
  • Sports facilities in city areas are very fewer than the required number. Increasing this number would be a great way to let more people do exercises and play.
  • Gyms and fitness clubs are expensive and sports centers maintained by the government would be less expensive.
  • People from all sorts of economic conditions and ages would be able to use such sports facilities.
  • Sports centers would also be a place for people to socialize and thus many people would be interested to both play and socialize there.

Why sports facilities would have little effect on public health?

Need huge budget

  • Public health depends on many factors including balanced diet, life style, healthy living, cleanliness, medical checkup, healthcare facilities etc. and spending only on sports facilities would not be prudent idea.
  • Statistics show that people are less interested to go to sports centers on their day offs and prefer doing shopping and enjoying other activities.
  • Sports enters would require staffs, maintenance and security; thus this would be an expensive investment for the government.
  • If government imposes charges for using the facilities of those sports centers, very few people would be interested to sue this facilities.
  • Sport is a good way to keep fit but many people would be interested to watch others’ performance than actually getting involved in the sports.

Alternative measures that are required to improve public health:Better medical facility

  • Awareness among people about healthy life style.
  • Balance diet.
  • Better medical facilities.
  • Keeping noise, air and water pollution in control.
  • Building a greener and cleaner environment.
  • Putting more emphasize on eradicating epidemic diseases.
  • Increasing the budget for research in healthcare sector.

Model Answer :
Health is a resource of everyday life, not the objective or luxury of living. It depends on various factors, such as body weight management, proper nutrition, avoiding alcohol abuse, abstaining from drug abuse, hygiene and getting the right amount of sleep. Some people think that a good number of sports facilities can ameliorate public health. Since it leans upon several conditions, a combined program is needed to progress public health, in my opinion.

Ensuring sports facilities to citizen is a good idea but inadequate to develop public health. Firstly, the use of sports facilities is limited by time, season and location. Therefore, all people cannot get benefit of it, particularly working people who work from 9 to 5. Moreover, the present life style is very busy and complicated, that means, there is severe paucity of time. So people cannot dedicate time to sports activities. Consequently, only a few numbers of people utilizes facilities at sport centers to keep fit and the significant number of mass remains out of it. Secondly, having facilities does not ensure always that people will make good use of what is offered to them. In most cases, it depends on individual choice and healthy life style.

On the other hand, public health can be improved by developing all health-related components of lifestyle, for instance, environment, education, habit and so on. Environment is the vital issue in terms of public health. Take water pollution for an example: it causes severe diseases like diarrhea. Likewise, air pollution causes sinusitis. So, to improve public health, we need some effective measures for protecting and maintaining healthy atmosphere. Not only pollution but food habit is also crucial. The habit of junk food causes obesity, for example. Above all, the substantial issue to improve public health is knowledge and awareness of a hygienic lifestyle. People need to be taught about the hazard of an unhealthy lifestyle, just as they need to be appreciated to lead a healthy lifestyle. This can be achieved by aiming at children and teaching them good health ethics so that they can follow it throughout their lives.

In short, I just want to say that no single effort has complete meaning alone. To improve public health, we need a set of programs so that it can cover every aspect of public health and that should include the sports facilities as well.