Early involvement by health services in the planning, preparation, operations and post-event analysis of mass gatherings provides one of the best opportunities to engage with other agencies and to develop a real sense of your agency's capabilities. The establishment of the new ISO Standards on Risk Management provide the best opportunity in a decade to structure this work in a manner that will develop true capacity to manage the multitude of risks health services face this century.

Rather than ad hoc and sometimes conflicting approaches we now have the “lingua franca” on which to build our policy, capacity development, budgets and response. The evolution of risk management standards has seen the release of ISO 31000: 2009, Risk management - Principles and guidelines and ISO 31010: 2009, Risk management – Risk assessment techniques. Largely based on the earlier Australian Standard 4360 and work of the IEC these standards have the potential to embed critical aspects of the responsibilities of health agencies worldwide into a universal singular policy framework. Translating this into other areas of health agencies work includes communicable disease management and emergency management, in general, which will allow other agencies to understand the “health” perspective and vice versa.

Drawing on personal experiences from mass gatherings since 1997, the author will demonstrate the utility of the ISO Standards as the framework for health emergency management including mass gatherings. Examples will include mass gatherings at the international level within the Asia- Pacific Region to the local level within Sydney, Australia from 1997 to 2010.