Georgi Popov1
Khalid Eddahiri2*†- 1Department of Occupational Risk and Safety Sciences, University of Central Missouri, Warrensburg, MO, United States
- 2Center for Research and Training in Disaster Medicine, Humanitarian Aid, and Global Health (CRIMEDIM), University of Eastern Piedmont “Amedeo Avogadro”, Novara, Italy
A Commentary on
Mass gathering healthcare and safety: current knowledge and future directions
by Pigeon, M.-A., Demers, A.-J., and Ciottone, G. (2025). Front. Disaster Emerg. Med. 3:1615181. doi: 10.3389/femer.2025.1615181
Dear Prof. Ives Hubloue, Specialty Chief Editor, Disaster Medicine,
We have read with interest the bibliometric review by Pigeon et al. (1) titled “Mass gathering healthcare and safety: current knowledge and future directions.”, recently published in Frontiers in Disaster and Emergency Medicine. This timely review examines key challenges encountered by the healthcare response during mass gathering events (MGEs), emphasizing the need for specific training and the development of formal expertise tailored to MGEs. The authors also stress the importance of required improvement in specific areas such as psychosocial aspects, quality evaluation and management, and supervision.
However, despite its comprehensive and insightful nature, the title is somewhat misleading. The safety aspects and corresponding safety tools are not addressed sufficiently, and it is not clear whether the authors were referring to public safety or occupational safety. In the results section, the largest number of articles fall under the “public health and security” category but without any mention of “safety”. In this specific context, many authors report that safety and security are being used interchangeably, and, in many dictionaries, they are defined as synonyms (2). Obviously, both concepts may have a lot in common, and the following statement reported by Line et al. (3) seems a bit excessive: “two faculties have developed with a certain degree of rivalry between them. Security people maintain that the safety people are just a gang of old men who are unwilling to learn something new, the safety people retaliate that the security people are youngsters who haven't realized that they're re-inventing the wheel!” For the emergency management and occupational safety communities, the objective is not to focus on the semantic difference between the two words but on the existing complementariness and synergies. Obviously, the fundamental challenge facing security professionals is preventing losses, and the same challenges are shared with safety professionals.
In the broad sense, security can be considered as protecting a system against intentional disruptions often caused by malicious parties, and safety can be considered as protecting that same system against unintentional disruptions. Hazards led to safety incidents in the same way that vulnerabilities lead to security incidents (4). For a comprehensive system thinking approach, a security approach—which is largely threat-based and may be tempted to conduct assessments in isolation—will have to avoid missing the larger system's perspective.
On the other hand, this review does not include several established benchmarks and updated guidelines that, in our view, are essential to the current understanding of MGEs context. This is fully understandable given their relatively recent publication dates, mainly in 2025. For instance, the World Health Organization (WHO) Mass gathering practical guide for simulation exercises and after-action reviews, published on April 11th, 2025 (5), along with several systematic reviews (6–9) represent critical references that contribute to both theoretical and practical aspects of MGEs preparedness and management.
In conclusion, the discussion related to the definition and interdisciplinarity between safety and security remains open. For the time being, we will maintain that the inability of the system to affect its environment in an undesirable way is usually called safety; the inability of the environment to affect the system in an undesirable way is usually called security.
Yours sincerely,
Dr. Georgi Popov, CSP, QEP, SMP, ARM, CMC, FASSP, FAIHA Professor, Lead Auditor ISO 45001 and ISO 14001
Occupational Risk and Safety Sciences Department
University of Central Missouri
Author contributions
GP: Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. KE: Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing.
WHO, World Health Organization; MGE, Mass Gathering Event.
Funding
The author(s) declare that no financial support was received for the research and/or publication of this article.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
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Abbreviations
WHO, World Health Organization; MGE, Mass Gathering Event.
References
1. Pigeon MA, Demers AJ, Ciottone G. Mass gathering healthcare and safety: current knowledge and future directions. Front Disaster Emerg Med. (2025) 3:1615181. doi: 10.3389/femer.2025.1615181
2. Nas S. The definitions of safety and security. J ETA Maritime Sci. (2015) 3:53–4. doi: 10.5505/jems.2015.42713
3. Line MB, Nordland O, Røstad L, Tøndel IA. Safety vs. Security? (PSAM-0148). In: Stamatelatos MG, Blackman HS. Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Probabilistic Safety Assessment & Management (PSAM). New York: ASME Press (2006).
4. Young W, Leveson N. Systems thinking for safety and security. In: Proceedings of the 29th Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC '13). New York, NY: ACM. (2013). p. 1–8.
5. World Health Organization (2025). Mass Gathering Practical Guide for Simulation Exercises and After Action Reviews. Geneva: WHO.
6. Alhajri W, Templeton A, Moore A. Social norms and risks at mass gatherings: a systematic review. Int J Disast Risk Reduct. (2023) 88:103586. doi: 10.1016/j.ijdrr.2023.103586
7. Çalişkan C, Kuday AD, Özcan T, Dag N, Kinik K. Quantitative metrics in mass-gathering studies: a comprehensive systematic review. Prehosp. Disaster Med. (2024) 39:195–205. doi: 10.1017/S1049023X2400027X
8. PoshtMashhadi A, Wood LC, Maghsoodi AI. The impact of mass gatherings and events on emergency department admissions: a systematic literature review. J Emerg Med. (2025) 74:23–48. doi: 10.1016/j.jemermed.2025.02.010
Keywords: mass gathering, safety, security, mass gathering event, major planned event
Citation: Popov G and Eddahiri K (2025) Commentary: Mass gathering healthcare and safety: current knowledge and future directions. Front. Disaster Emerg. Med. 3:1664857. doi: 10.3389/femer.2025.1664857
Received: 12 July 2025; Accepted: 18 August 2025;
Published: 10 September 2025.
Edited by:
Benoit Viault, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Toulouse, FranceReviewed by:
Andrew Milsten, University of Massachusetts System, United StatesCara Taubman, Harlem Hospital Center, United States
Copyright © 2025 Popov and Eddahiri. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Khalid Eddahiri, a2hhbGlkLmVkZGFoaXJpQGdtYWlsLmNvbQ==
†ORCID: Khalid Eddahiri orcid.org/0009-0000-1477-2966