Australian researchers lead world-first project on female athlete health

Source : ABC NEWS

The conversation about the knowledge gap in women’s health in Australia has been growing.

Whether it’s the difference in heart attack symptoms or the estimated seven years it takes for endometriosis to be diagnosed, many conditions disproportionately impacting women haven’t received the focus they need.

Meanwhile, historically, most research has been conducted on male bodies, which is then generalised to female and intersex bodies. Only around six per cent of sport science and sports medicine research is female-specific. 

Australian researchers are working to understand what the gaps are through a new research project by the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) in conjunction with Edith Cowan University and the University of Technology Sydney.

They’re developing an evidence gap map, which will summarise existing performance and health evidence, assessing its quality and major research gaps that need increased focus.

The AIS hopes the findings will encourage governments and academia to invest in under-represented research areas, and make high-quality information more accessible to the athletes, coaches and sporting organisations who need it.

Quality over quantity

Chief Science Officer at the AIS, Paolo Menaspà, says that it’s not just about the quantity of evidence available for athletes and high-performance staff, but its quality.

“There is a growing concern that sometimes the threshold for what is good quality kind of moves,” he said.

Menaspà says a big part of the AIS’s project will be a “systematic assessment … of the quality of each study” for things like bias to ensure the evidence being used by athletes and coaches is appropriate.

Planning for the study included asking the very people who will benefit from the research — athletes and their coaches — what they see as key concerns. 

So far, they’ve asked for topics like menstrual and gynaecological health, illness and infection, and bone health and nutrition to be prioritised.

Dr Rachel Harris, Female Performance and Health Initiative Lead at the AIS and former professional swimmer, says there is limited research available.

This gap means often relying on evidence that hasn’t considered differences or impacts resulting from sex and gender. It can result in incorrect or delayed diagnosis and treatment for injuries and other health conditions, and limited ability for prevention.

“We want that information that gets to our athletes to be based on high-quality research that’s going to benefit them, not from low-quality research that is just flash in the pan, hot topic at the present time,” Dr Harris said.

Building momentum for the Global Alliance for Female Athletes

The research announcement follows the launch of the Global Alliance for Female Athletes, of which the AIS is a founding member, in March. A significant partnership with counterparts in the United States, the United Kingdom and New Zealand, the Alliance is designed to share resources like best-practice research and performance insights to support female athletes’ health and performance worldwide.

Dr Harris says the group was formed because high-performance staff from different countries realised, they were talking about navigating the same challenges with often limited time and resources.

“None of this information is around state secrets,” she said.

“It’s actually all around some real basics. So we just wanted to try and see if we could potentially get together and avoid the duplication, collaborate more.”

She says that members are sharing their open access resources for anyone’s use — not just those in the Alliance, or particular sports.

Mr Menaspà explains that the evidence gap project is also operating “under the principles of open science.”

“If we make the information transparent then it can be not only peer-reviewed but also checked by other research groups,” he said.

Serious real-world implications

Both the Global Alliance partnership and this new project acknowledge the physical and mental impact that the lack of quality research available is having on women athletes.

Retired American soccer player and winner of two FIFA Women’s World Cups, Megan Rapinoe, recently revealed on her podcast A Touch More with Sue Bird & Megan Rapinoe that all three ACL tears she experienced during her career had happened while she was on her period.

The revelation came in response to new research being conducted at Kingston University in London and funded by football’s world governing body FIFA to investigate a possible link between serious knee injuries for female athletes and their menstrual cycles.

Dr Harris says she’s seen a “real upswing” in the amount of interest and activity in the women’s health and performance space.

“We really want to try and drive home the fact that we need to be having good quality research to answer the questions that our athletes want [answered].

“For example, does hormonal contraception impact our health now and in the future? We don’t necessarily have that answer.”

This knowledge gap becomes more pronounced for diverse athlete populations whose experiences or characteristics may also go unrecognised in research. For example, one priority area Dr Harris highlights for the map is the health needs and their associated impacts for para-athletes.

As a professional swimmer who won gold in 800m freestyle at the 1998 Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur, Dr Harris says she was “pretty naive back then” about what information she was missing before she retired at the age of 21.

She sees many more athletes today wanting this information, something she attributes to social media and increased attention on women athletes.

“We’re definitely not where we need to be yet. 

“Hopefully for Brisbane 2032, we’re going to know a lot more of these questions if we start this process now.”

ABC Sport is partnering with Siren Sport to elevate the coverage of Australian women in sport.

Danielle Croci is a policy officer and freelance writer and podcaster specialising in women’s sport.