WADA’s Anti-Doping Education and Learning platform marks first anniversary

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA)’s new and improved Anti-Doping Education and Learning (ADEL) platform, which was launched in January 2021, recently turned one year old.

ADEL is a free, secure and user-friendly digital platform that provides education and learning opportunities for the anti-doping community worldwide; including: athletes, coaches, parents, medical professionals and more. Additionally, on ADEL, anti-doping practitioners are able to find learning opportunities to help them carry out their roles; and, resources to support development of their anti-doping programs.

To mark the first anniversary, we are pleased to share ADEL One Year On, a report on the performance of ADEL over the last 12 months, as well as measures planned to improve the e-learning platform further in 2022 and beyond.

In 2021, WADA developed and published on ADEL a significant number of educational guides, programs, courses and toolkits. These cover a range of important topics and are tailored for athletes of different levels (registered testing pool, international level, national level, talented) and their support personnel (coaches of high-performance athletes, parents of elite athletes, medical professionals).  The platform also hosted pre-Games education; and, other resources that were published to help anti-doping practitioners as part of WADA’s World Anti-Doping Code Implementation Support Program (CISP) that was launched in May 2020.

In total, 87,487 active users from 173 countries interacted with ADEL during 2021, with Slovenia’s 16,824 registered users leading the way. The number of active users rose every month in 2021, from 3,559 in January to 16,072 in December, demonstrating faster user adoption rate and significant growth in the use of the new and modern ADEL over the year. Compared with the previous platform, the user adoption rate and growth rate are more than two times faster.

Of the total unique active users, athletes (53,530) and coaches (14,101) topped the list, followed by medical professionals (3,660) and Anti-Doping Organization practitioners (2,178). In addition, users representing 201 different sports engaged with ADEL throughout the year, led by those in gymnastics, basketball and volleyball.

WADA Education Director Amanda Hudson said: “WADA’s commitment to education and our investment in a new and improved ADEL is already demonstrating its benefits. We are extremely pleased by the amount of learning that took place through ADEL last year and the wide cross-section of people that engaged. We saw everyone from athletes, support personnel and Anti-Doping Organizations to journalists and university students engaging with our content. The number of active users grew steadily throughout the year, beyond our predictions and expectations, which highlights the quality of our programs and resources for Anti-Doping Organizations. Our work to enable Anti-Doping Organizations in their education efforts and their commitment to using ADEL is contributing to our ambition of seeing more and more athletes and support personnel educated about anti-doping.”

ADEL users completed 172,867 education courses and programs in 2021, an indication that many completed more than one course.

While the platform is configured in English, French and Spanish, an increasing number of resources and programs will continue to be made available in other languages as part of the ongoing translation collaboration and support to Anti-Doping Organizations to help them educate their athletes and athlete support personnel.