High Performance Sport New Zealand Forms Part Of Historic Global Partnership To Advance Women’s Sport

Today marks a pivotal moment for women’s sport with four nations forming an alliance aimed at advancing female health and performance worldwide.

The Global Alliance for Female Athletes (GAFA) will see leading health practitioners and sports scientists from New Zealand, Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom join forces to help female athletes overcome prevalent health issues to reach their full sporting potential. 

Athletes, coaches and support staff will be able to access world-leading evidence, performance insights and best-practice information all in the one place – for free.

High Performance Sport New Zealand (HPSNZ) Athlete Performance Support Lead Dr Helen Fulcher says the prioritisation of women’s health in sport is long overdue.

“We know female athlete research, knowledge and education lags that of male athletes globally, so bringing together international expertise will help change this inequality,” Dr Fulcher says.

“The benefits are broad for female athletes and their coaches. They will be able to access and utilise the most up-to-date information that is not always available in a digestible or translatable form.

“Every nation will go on to implement the knowledge in specific ways – those are some of the national secrets to achieving success – however, having a baseline of collective public information grows the world stage for all.”

Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) Female Performance Health Initiative Project Lead Dr Rachel Harris says collaborating with world-class experts to empower and educate athletes will lead to even greater results on the world stage.

“On a global scale, health literacy around female-specific conditions is poor,” Dr Harris says.

“This gap in knowledge, coupled with wide-spread misinformation, means athletes often miss the early warning signs and go undiagnosed or are inadequately treated for conditions like endometriosis or dysmenorrhea.

“Athletes are then forced to miss training days which reduces their chances of making competition or in some cases sees them leave the sport altogether. Our goal is to change this.”

United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee (USOPC) Sports Medicine Vice President Amber Donaldson says future projects will be conquered as a collective rather than in silos which is another major first.

“This collaboration, bringing expertise and initiative in the space of women’s health and performance together, will allow us to move the needle faster and more efficiently than if we were attempting to do this on our own,” Donaldson said.

The UK Sport Institute’s Female Athlete Health and Performance Lead Dr Richard Burden says the GAFA hopes to eventually have representation from every nation.

“If we can raise the awareness and prioritisation of female athlete health and performance in all corners of the globe then GAFA will have been a success,” Dr Burden said.
 

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